Air India on Saturday released a statement saying that their flights would not be travelling over the airspaces of Iran, Iraq and Israel. This comes as the Middle East boils on the tenth day of the Israel-Iran conflict that has been escalated by American involvement.
The airline added that it would be circumventing “certain airspace over the Persian Gulf in the coming days”, for flights to destinations such as the UAE, Qatar, Oman and Kuwait.
“This adjustment may lead to extended flight durations for these services, as well as for select flights to/from Europe and North America,” a spokesperson clarified, as per a PTI report.
Just a few days ago, two American carriers United Airlines and American Airlines had suspended flights to Qatar and Dubai respectively, amid a mass exodus of tourists in the Israel-Iran region.
Israel's largest carriers, El Al Israel Airlines, Arkia and Israir, said on Sunday afternoon that they would be resuming rescue flights that allowed people to return to Israel, after an earlier notification saying that the country's airspace would be closed for all flights. Land crossings with Egypt and Jordan remain open, as are boat routes to places like Cyprus.
US President Donald Trump had announced in the early hours of Sunday that the United States had dropped a “full payload” of bombs on three Iranian nuclear sites including Fordow, a fortified undergound nuclear enrichment site, formally joining the Israel-Iran conflict.
At the time of the announcement, he added that all the planes used for the bombing were “outside Iranian airspace”. Other targets included the Natanz facility, which has already been struck by Israel recently, as well as a third site near Isfahan where Iran is believed to store uranium enriched to near-weapons-grade.
The escalation of the conflict also complicates India's evacuation operation for Indians stranded in the two warring nations, titled Operation Sindhu.
With approximately 1,000 Indian nationals evacuated from Israel and Iran so far, and a number of the evacuations carried out via flights, the government is now expected to rely more on land and sea routes for rescue operations.