Air France suspends flights to Burkina Faso, Mali after Niger airspace closure

Air France, the French national carrier, has suspended flights to and from Bamako in Mali and Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso.

The suspension is to last till August 11.

According to Reuters, the company announced the development on Monday.

This comes a day after Niger’s military rulers announced the closure of the country’s airspace due to the “threat of intervention”.

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

“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.”

The news agency quoted an Air France spokesperson as saying 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 said.