This is extremely worrying - the current crisis is worse than anything I have seen since India and Pakistan last kicked off, back in the early 1970s.
PIA have announced they will be suspending their weekly operations to Sri Lanka, Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines due to the overflight restrictions imposed by India. In other news the airline's staff have been ordered to leave India by the 3rd January. Services to Nepal, Bangladesh, China, Japan and Thailand remain unaffected, and PIA are currently flying 747s to Mumbai and Dehli evacuate their remaining nationals.
<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_1729000/1729988.stm" target="_blank">BBC Report</a>
And from Pakistan's
The News, this:
[quote]
India, Pakistan to re-schedule air routes
By Masood Anwar
KARACHI: Pakistan and India closed their air space for commercial flights of each other and now national flag carriers of both countries - Pakistan International Airlines and Air India - will have to reschedule their flights and air routes. All the flights towards the Far East from Pakistan will be disturbed by the closure of the Indian airspace while India may have to suspend or divert all its west-bound flights from New Delhi to the Gulf, European and US destinations, aviation experts said.
"We are watching the situation carefully and will assess the feasibility of every flight," Khurshid Anwar, Chief Operating Officer of PIA, told The News. However despite several attempts to contact the officials of the CAA, o body was available for their reaction.
PIA has been operating five flights for Mumbai and three flights for Delhi from Karachi every week while from Lahore four flights are being operated for Delhi. After the closure of Indian airspace, all these flights will be suspended. About 13 flights are operated by PIA for the destinations located in the Far East overflying India, Burma and Thailand. All these will be disturbed. "Definitely we will reschedule our flight operations," Khurshid said and added that all flights found not feasible would be suspended. PIA is flying twice for Hong Kong in a week and these flights would be re-routed over China, he said.
Alliance with airlines for the affected routes is not out of the question. PIA could go into agreement with other airlines on the block space basis, he said. Due to the Afghan situation, many foreign airlines had already suspended flying over Pak-Afghan routes. Thus India was already flying lesser number of flights over Pakistan. Closure of Pakistani airspace for India will mean a negative impact on all west-bound Indian flights that take off from Delhi airport. Its flight operations from Mumbai and Calcutta will not be affected.
In case of closure of Pakistani airspace for Indian planes, India will be shifting its entire flight operations for the Gulf, Europe and US from Delhi to Mumbai and Calcutta, experts said. Pakistan also did the same exercise in September after the closure of the Afghan airspace and shifted its entire flying operation for Europe and US from Lahore and Islamabad to Karachi, they recalled.
After the closure of Indian airspace for Pakistani aircraft, PIA has now been forced to use new routes passing over the Arabian Sea to Colombo for the destinations located in Far East, they said. Change of route means extra flying time of more than 50 minutes and consumption of extra fuel worth of thousands of dollars.
Source: The News International (Jang Group)<hr></blockquote>