Pakistan Airport Authority extends airspace ban for Indian flights

KARACHI: In a recent development, Pakistan‘s Airports Authority (PAA) has extended the ban on Indian planes traversing its airspace to June 24, 2025.

According to the Pakistan Airports Authority, the ban includes the prohibition on all known aircraft owned, operated, registered, or leased directly or indirectly by India, including military craft, and should be strictly interpreted against any Indian airline or operator.

The ban should remain until 4:59 AM on June 24, 2025. The Pakistan airspace closure, for Indian flights, has been in existence for a little over a month has been specifically ordered against India in response to blocking river water flow into Pakistan.

The current airspace closure has directly impacted Indian Airlines, with estimated losses of up to an estimated Rs 8 billion. On a daily basis, approximately 150 flights of Boeing 777 and Airbus aircraft have added an hour to four hours of travel time.

Indian airlines have incurred additional fuel expenditures of around Rs 5 billion over the past month. Long-haul flights added a stopover, of expenditures of Rs 3 billion.

Air India has approached the federal government for assistance directly from this existing situation and stipulated that a ban is expected annual losses above Rs 50 billion if the ban is in place.

Air India offered a “subsidy model“ to proportionally offset its losses from the impact. The embargo on the usage of Pakistan airspace for Indian flights was decided in an extraordinary meeting of the National Security Committee meeting chaired by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, in the aftermath of India‘s provocative act under the cover of the Pahalgam attack.

It is important to note that tensions between Pakistan and India have increased since baseless allegations were made against Pakistan by India following the Pahalgam attack in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK), where 26 persons were killed, many of whom were tourists.

Without producing any evidence whatsoever, shortly after the attack, India alleged that the attack was carried out from Pakistan. India‘s foreign ministry had announced to indefinitely suspend the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960 and stop the deployment of the Attari and Wagah borders.

Pakistani nationals will no longer be able to travel to India under the SAARC visa exemption. Likewise, the Indian foreign ministry would not only recall its defense attachés from Islamabad.