Air France on Monday announced suspension of flights to and from Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso and Bamako in Mali until August 11.
This comes after the military junta in Niger Republic on Sunday closed its airspace citing “threat of intervention” by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
Reuters reports that a flight tracking service, FlightRadar24, said in a blog post that “The closure of Niger’s airspace dramatically widens the area over which most commercial flights between Europe and southern Africa cannot fly.
“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.”
An Air France spokesperson, according to Reuters, said 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 further reported.
