Two European airlines had to cancel flights to Moscow after Russian authorities failed to approve new flight paths that avoided Belarus’s airspace in response to the interception of an EU commercial flight by the Belarusian regime.
Air France and Austrian Airlines had planned to reroute flights that would normally fly over Belarus after EU countries requested their airlines to avoid the country’s airspace after Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko sent a military jet to divert a Vilnius-bound Ryanair flight carrying an opposition activist.
Both airlines said Russian aviation authorities failed to approve the new routes, leading to the cancellation of a flight from Paris to Moscow on Wednesday, and from Vienna to Moscow on Thursday. An Air France flight to Russia on Friday was still awaiting permission to use a new route avoiding Belarus.