Air France has suspended flights to and from Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso and Bamako in Mali until August 11.
A spokesperson of the company, on Monday, said 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.
“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.”
This comes a day after Niger’s military rulers announced the closure of the country’s airspace due to the “threat of intervention”.
Aviation analyst James Halstead said that airlines would mostly have to find alternative routes and difficulties should be limited given the small number of African air connections.
“I’m not sure this is huge disruption … it will affect routes from Europe to Nigeria and South Africa and probably from the Gulf of the Ethiopia to West Africa,” he said.
Also, the Spokesmen for Lufthansa and Brussels Airlines said that flight times could be between one-and-a-half and three-and-a-half hours longer for rerouted flights.
British Airways also, in an emailed statement, apologized to their customers affected for the disruption to their journeys, assuring that they were working hard to get them on their way again as quickly as possible.
Chioma Kalu
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