PARIS - Tens of thousands of airline passengers are waking up where they did not expect to be after carriers diverted many planes in response to Iran’s overnight attack on Israel.
The normal flightpath from Europe and North America to the Gulf and south Asia is to fly to the southeast corner of Turkey and then head southeast over either Iran or Iraq.
But as missiles were fired from Iran over Iraq towards Israel, the airspace of both countries was closed. Jordan’s skies were also closed temporarily. The most extreme response was Air France flight AF218 from Paris to Mumbai – in which the passengers endured an eight-hour trip to nowhere.
