Air France, the
French national carrier, has suspended flights to and from Bamako in Mali and
Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso.
The suspension is to last till August 11.
According
to Reuters, the company announced the development on
Monday.
This comes a day after Niger’s military rulers announced the closure of the country’s airspace due to the “threat of intervention”.
“The closure of
Niger’s airspace dramatically widens the area over which most commercial
flights between Europe and southern Africa cannot fly,” FlightRadar24, a flight
tracking service, said in a blog post.
“Flights must already take a detour of sorts around Libya
and Sudan.
“With Niger’s airspace now off limits as well, airlines
flying between Europe and southern Africa will need to reroute and add 1000 or
more extra kilometers to their flights, increasing the amount of fuel each
flight will need and the flight time.”
The news agency quoted an Air France spokesperson as saying
that the airline expected longer flight times from sub-Saharan hub airports and
that flights between Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris and Accra in Ghana were
set to operate non-stop.
A spokesperson for Brussels Airlines added that flight times
could be between an hour and a half to three and a half hours longer for
rerouted flights and could include a fuel stop, Reuters said.
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