New Delhi:
The airspace in India’s western region along the border with Pakistan is no longer available for commercial flights, reports said.
The new NOTAMs may affect international flights too. Taiwan’s China Airlines and Korean Air have started rerouting or cancelling flights to and from Europe, news agency Reuters reported today.
NOTAM is a notice containing information essential to personnel concerned with flight operations, but not known far enough in advance to be publicized by other means.
OSINT researcher Damien Symon in a post on X said, “Notifications coming out of India now, multiple air traffic routes unavailable across the western sector along the border with Pakistan.”
Important Travel Update:
Due to ongoing situation, our flights to and from Leh, Srinagar, Jammu, Kangra, Kandla & Amritsar are cancelled for 7th May’25.
Please visit our website or log into our mobile app to check your flight status before leaving for airport.#flyspicejet… pic.twitter.com/0WyF6PSDw4
— SpiceJet (@flyspicejet) May 7, 2025
At least 18 airports in the northern and western parts of the country have been temporarily shut. These include Srinagar, Leh, Jammu, Amritsar, Pathankot, Chandigarh, Jodhpur, Jaisalmer, Shimla, Dharamshala and Jamnagar.
Images from flight tracking websites after the attack showed a long line of airlines passing over Oman, the UAE, and Kuwait, raising the possibility of airspace congestion.
In the last few days, India and Pakistan had shut their airspace to each other’s airlines. Global airlines like Lufthansa have also been avoiding Pakistan airspace.
Images from Flightradar24 showed that the northwestern part of India and Pakistan’s airspace was nearly free of civilian aircraft, barring a few flights.
Notifications coming out of India now, multiple air traffic routes unavailable across the western sector along the border with Pakistan
Date 07-09 May 2025 pic.twitter.com/dJVUcbD8Pe
— Damien Symon (@detresfa_) May 7, 2025
The Association Of Asia Pacific Airlines voiced concern over the impact of conflicts on airline operations.
“Apart from cost and operational disruption, there are safety concerns as GPS spoofing interfering with flight operations over conflict zones is one of highest risks the industry faces,” it said in a statement.
GPS spoofing is a malicious technique that manipulates Global Positioning System (GPS) data, which can send commercial airliners off course.
India launched several cruise missile strikes today at nine sites in Pakistan and Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (PoK) where terrorists lived and trained.
India had been widely expected to respond militarily to the terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam last month that killed 26 tourists. The terrorists had cross-border linkages.