The whole point is that there were five flights in a cluster going along the same route, when the airspace was closed all proceeded to circumvent Sudan, but abeam of Jeddah two (SN/LH) turned back while three (BA/KL/KQ) continued. All were originally planned to go down Sudan, so none of them had the required permits to overly Eritrea (it is possible to go down the middle of the Red Sea in international airspace, El Al does that multiple times every day). Ethiopan overflight permits would have been required as South Sudan airspace was to be avoided in any case.