Airlines Air France and Lufthansa announced on Saturday (May 29th) that they had obtained the approval by the Russian authorities of new flight plans to Russia, which will allow their planes to avoid overflight of Belarus. .
The European Union’s Aviation Safety Agency advised domestic and foreign airlines to avoid Belarusian airspace after an airliner forced landing in Minsk, followed by the arrest of an opponent to the Belarusian President who was on board on May 23.
Two Air France flights, which were to connect Paris to Moscow, were canceled this week for lack of a green light from Russia for a change of route. The Kremlin had advanced “Technical questions” to justify these refusals.
“The new flight plan has been in effect since today. We have the authorizations for this weekend and we are awaiting a return from the authorities for our flights beyond ”, said the spokesperson for Air France. A spokeswoman for Lufthansa, Germany’s leading airline, said the company had obtained the green light from Moscow for its flights from Frankfurt to Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Air France, which is part of the Air France-KLM group, operates one or two flights a day between Paris and Moscow. Lufthansa, for its part, currently operates four return flights from Frankfurt to Moscow and three return flights from Frankfurt to St. Petersburg per week.