Air France SUSPENDS flights to Burkina Faso and Mali after Niger shuts space

• The suspension is to last till August 11

Flights to and from Bamako in Mali and Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso have been suspended by Air France, the French national carrier.

The flight suspension which is expected to last till August 11, was announced on Monday, August 6, hours after Niger Republic’s military junta announced the closure of the country’s airspace due to the ‘threat of intervention’.

Air France said they expect longer flight times from sub-Saharan hub airports and that flights between Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris and Accra in Ghana are set to operate non-stop.

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Brussels Airlines also told Reuters 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.

The disruption adds to a band of African airspace facing geopolitical disruptions including Libya and Sudan, with some flights facing up to 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) in detours.

‘The closure of Niger’s airspace dramatically widens the area over which most commercial flights between Europe and southern Africa cannot fly,’ tracking service FlightRadar24 said in a blog post.