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Pakistan Opens Airspace For All Civilian Traffic; Indian Flights To Operate Soon

Pakistan opened its airspace for all civilian traffic on Tuesday morning, sources told PTI. 

An aircraft operated by IndiGo is seen from a control tower as it takes off at Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi.  (Photographer: Prashanth Vishwanathan/Bloomberg)
An aircraft operated by IndiGo is seen from a control tower as it takes off at Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi. (Photographer: Prashanth Vishwanathan/Bloomberg)

Pakistan opened its airspace for all civilian traffic on Tuesday morning, sources said, effectively removing the ban on Indian flights that were not allowed to use majority of its airspace since the Balakot air strikes in February.

The move is expected to give a major relief to Air India, which suffered a huge financial loss of around Rs 491 crore as it had to re-route its various international flights due to the closure of the Pakistan airspace.

Pakistan has permitted all airlines to fly through its airspace from around 12:41 a.m. today, the sources told PTI. Indian airline operators will start using normal routes through Pakistan airspace soon, they added.

Pakistan had fully closed its airspace on Feb. 26 after the Indian Air Force struck a Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist training camp in Balakot in retaliation to the Pulwama attack on Feb. 14. Since then, the neighbouring country had only opened two routes, both of them passing through the southern region, of the total 11.

On its part, the IAF had announced on May 31 that all temporary restrictions imposed on the Indian airspace post the Balakot strike had been removed. However, it did not benefit most of the commercial airliners and they were waiting for Pakistan to fully open its airspace.

In India, the biggest pain was suffered by Air India that conducts various international flights from Delhi to Europe and the U.S.

The national carrier had lost Rs 491 crore till July 2 due to the closure of the Pakistan airspace. Private airlines SpiceJet, IndiGo and GoAir lost Rs 30.73 crore, Rs 25.1 crore and Rs 2.1 crore, respectively, according to the data presented by Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri in the Rajya Sabha on July 3.

Post the air strike, Air India had to re-route, merge or suspend many of its international flights that connect India with European and U.S. cities.

IndiGo, India's largest airline by domestic market share, was unable to start direct flights from Delhi to Istanbul due to the closure of the Pakistan airspace.

The low-cost carrier started the Delhi-Istanbul flight in March. Till date, this IndiGo flight had to take the longer route over the Arabian Sea and make a stop at Doha in Qatar for refuelling.