BA reroutes to avoid Afghan air space

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  • EasternPedlar
    Participant

    I’ve been looking at the route maps for Delhi-London flights, and it’s interesting to see how different airlines are dealing with the regional airspace issues.

    BA is actually flying southwest from Delhi, and then turning northwest after reaching the Arabian Sea. In the process they are avoiding Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran. They fly over Oman, Saudi Arabia, Jordan & Egypt to get to the Mediterranean, and then up through Greece etc to reach London. That’s a pretty long route and is adding 1-2 hours to the flying time! They must be bleeding badly, especially with fuel prices being what they are. I wonder why they are avoiding Pakistan as there aren’t any issues there.

    AI on the other hand flies directly northwest from Delhi over Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, then across the Black Sea to Romania, Hungary and Germany to reach the UK. They save about 1 1/2 hours vs BA.

    This route was earlier affected by diversions to avoid Belarus and Ukraine (post the MH incident) and the flying time is getting longer and longer. Never a dull day in the airline business!


    AMcWhirter
    Participant

    B777 pilot Charles Price shows his southerly flight routing for LHR-BKK-LHR

    1 user thanked author for this post.

    DavidSmith2
    Participant

    I may be completely wrong, but could this be because of the EU/UK disagreement with Belarus and the ban Belarus has on EU/UK flights in their airspace?

    Even if the northern option did not actually overfly Belarus, it may be a bit close for comfort.

    Only a guess though.


    GBAIR72
    Participant

    I’d rather the extra 2 hours on flight and not end as pile of rubble

    2 users thanked author for this post.

    EasternPedlar
    Participant

    There is more to it than safety. No one in their right minds would go over Afghanistan these days, but there is a lot of politics at play in the selection of routes. Some airlines have re-routed via Iran (Lufthansa, Air India to name a couple) and their flight durations haven’t been affected too badly. BA won’t fly over Iran, so they have no choice but to take a much longer route. Again, the decision not to fly over Belarus is for political rather than safety reasons.

    The governments play their games, and airlines and passengers suffer.


    AMcWhirter
    Participant

    Independent running a piece this evening re BA’s Delhi-London flights taking that longer routing which adds to journey time.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/british-airways-flights-afghanistan-iran-b1915181.html

    1 user thanked author for this post.

    EasternPedlar
    Participant

    The route has changed again! Now across Pakistan, then Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor into Tajikstan and over Central Asia, Russia and Latvia to the UK. Still a bit of a wriggle to avoid Belarus. The flight times are almost back to normal.


    AMcWhirter
    Participant

    Aviation writer Andreas Spaeth returned SIN-FRA last night with SIA.

    His flight also took a southerly routing which added to flight time.

    1 user thanked author for this post.
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