European Airlines Adding Up to 2 Hours Onto Flight Times to Avoid Niger’s Closed Airspace

Flights between Europe and several nations in Africa just got longer.

On Sunday, Niger’s ruling military group — or junta — suddenly closed the country’s airspace until further notice, citing threats from neighboring nations who have called for a reverse of the junta’s July 26 coup.

According to FlightRadar24, this restriction means airlines that used to fly to countries like South Africa and Ghana via Niger skies now have to go around adding hours of flight time and up to 600 or more miles to the already long journeys.

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