Pakistan closed its airspace in February after a suicide bomber from militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed attacked a convoy in Indian-controlled Kashmir. Following the attack, both Pakistan and India carried out aerial bombings on each other’s territory, and their military jets engaged in a sudden battle in the skies above — a dramatic escalation in a long-standing conflict.
While some areas of Pakistan’s airspace has reopened — many of the airspace restrictions implemented over one month ago remain in place. The continuing restrictions have left international airlines, such as British Airways, avoiding overflying Pakistan, and entire countries, such as Afghanistan, unable to fly on routes to India without extreme detours.
Afghanistan’s civil aviation authority stated the country is suffering heavy losses following the new restrictions, which force commercial flights between Afghanistan and India (one of its largest trading partners) to fly back west, over Iran, continuing south of Pakistan, and into India.
It’s resulted in an additional three hours of flying time between Kabul and Delhi — a journey that would ordinarily take around two hours.
Consequently, airfares between Afghanistan and India have doubled in price over the recent weeks, predominantly due to the increase in fuel costs for airlines, having to adhere to the airspace restrictions.
Afghanistan-based airline Kam Air and Ariana Afghan Airlines are still offering direct flights to India, but are incurring losses by doing so. Ariana Afghan Airlines has lost $550,000 in the past month because of Pakistan’s restrictions, while Kam Air has lost $1mn in the same period “as costs rose and ticket sales fell” according to the airline.
The latest of airspace restrictions as a result of the Pakistan-India tensions have once again proven the industry’s reliance on Iran, for overflight. Major airlines, including Singapore Airlines, that would ordinarily fly on a more northerly route over Pakistan are now flying south of the country instead, before entering Iranian airspace and overflying much of the Islamic Republic country.
A key airspace region between India and Oman is also facing heavy congestion given the number of flights re-routing around Pakistani airspace. Both the countries are advising airlines to carry extra fuel and to expect a variation of flights levels that may differ from the altitude requested by pilots.
Furthermore, the US FAA has now updated its airspace warning for Pakistan, highlighting that military activity by Pakistan and India in the disputed Kashmir region “poses a potential inadvertent risk to aviation at all altitudes.”
As a result, the US warns against flying into or over Pakistan.
Pakistan is a signatory to both ICAO’s Transit Agreement and Chicago Convention which permit the country to close all, or part of its airspace — on the condition it does not discriminate against the nationality of an aircraft.
* The author is an aviation analyst. Twitter handle: @AlexInAir