ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) on Wednesday said the country’s airspace was open for all domestic and international flights after being closed for 28 days because of tensions with nuclear-armed neighbor India.
Pakistan and India almost went to war last month as they exchanged airstrikes and engaged in aerial dogfights. Both countries shut down their respective airspaces in response to the hostilities, leaving thousands of travelers stranded and forcing carriers to reroute flights.
“Pakistan has opened its airspace for all flights, including all domestic and international routes, but transit flights and flights for Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and New Delhi will stay suspended,” Farah Hussain, the spokeswoman for the CAA, told Arab News.
She did not give a timeline for when transit flights would be resumed.
When asked how much financial loss had been incurred by Pakistan due to the 28-day airspace closure, Hussain declined to comment on account of the information being “classified.”
Tahir Imran, an aviation journalist, said a rough estimate of losses on international flights alone stood at around $14 million.
“Domestic airline losses due to the airspace closure and rerouting of their flights are not included in this estimate,” Imran said. “But those also run into millions of rupees.”
Out of a total income of Rs35 billion per year, the CAA makes around sixty percent from airlines using Pakistan’s airspace.
Imran said Pakistan operates 150 to 175 domestic flights and around 300 international flights land at its airports daily.
A former director of the CAA and two retired pilots put the losses incurred due to the airspace closure as high as $20 million.
Sohail Baloch, a former president of the Pakistan Airlines Pilots Association, said India had suffered around ten times more loss than Pakistan in the past month.
“Our flight operation and business is very small compared to India, so Pakistan’s losses are also comparatively much less,” he said.
According to Indian media reports, Air India alone had suffered over $8.72 million in losses until last week due to the closure of Pakistan’s airspace, because its flights traveling west can no longer fly through Pakistani airspace and need to swing south across Gujarat and then cut across the Arabian sea to reach their destinations in Europe and North America.