Wars and heightened geopolitical tensions can hugely affect the safety of countries’ airspaces.
A concerning map created by Safe Airspace shows there are eight nations where it is considered too dangerous to fly.
The only nation in Europe marked with a “do not fly” tag by Safe Airspace, an initiative by independent membership organisation OPSGROUP, is Ukraine, where a war prompted by the unlawful Russian invasion of the country has been raging since February 2022.
The map noted Ukraine closed its entire airspace to all civil traffic following the invasion. The US, the UK and other Western countries also issued total flight bans for Ukraine due to risk from military activity.
Alongside the danger of civil aircraft becoming an unintended target, the risk highlighted by the map about flying above Ukraine is “potential lack of Ukrainian Air Traffic Control Service at short notice (Cyber Attack), and other unforeseeable non-normal operating environments for civil aircraft”.
Safe Airspace considers flying over Russia, Moldova and Belarus less dangerous than Ukraine, but acknowledges the current geopolitical tensions have created danger there. The British FCDO advises against all travel to Belarus and Russia.
When it comes to the African continent, Safe Airspace urges people not to fly over Libya, where armed clashes between rival militias continue following the 2014 civil war, and Sudan, where a civil war erupted in 2023.
The five other countries considered to have an airspace too dangerous to be crossed are all located in the Middle East, and are Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and Iran.
The map noted that following the return to power of the Taliban, Afghanistan doesn’t currently have air traffic control.
The Iranian airspace is made dangerous not just by recent tensions with Israel, which erupted in aerial attacks, but also by ballistic military test launches and GPS jamming.
The airspace in Iraq, Yemen and Syria is made too dangerous to be crossed by civilian aircraft by the conflicts and armed insurgencies in some parts of these countries.
