Some European airlines are facing significant delays as their flights from the Middle East make fuel stops after being rerouted around Iran.
Sunday’s Eurowings Flight 1153, from Dubai, made two stopovers on its way to Stuttgart, Germany.
It first flew for just over 6 hours to Thessaloniki, Greece, for a refuelling stop, data from Flightradar24 shows.
After about 50 minutes on the ground, it took off again for Germany. However, the 2-hour flight landed in Nuremberg around 1:30 a.m.
It appears that it was too late to land in Stuttgart due to nighttime flight restrictions.
Therefore, it wasn’t until the next morning that the plane made another 30-minute flight to reach its intended destination.
In all, it arrived in Stuttgart 11 hours after the usual direct flight from Dubai.
A Eurowings spokesperson told Business Insider that its owner, the Lufthansa Group, decided not to fly over Iranian or Iraqi airspace as a precautionary measure.
They added that the refueling stop was “due to a longer flight distance and stronger headwinds on the alternative route at the time.”
“In the event of such refueling, we inform our passengers accordingly before departure in Dubai,” they said.
It isn’t the only European airline that has made such adjustments.
A spokesperson for Wizz Air, another budget airline, told Reuters that some of its flights from Dubai and Abu Dhabi would make “refuelling and crew change” stops in Cyprus or Thessaloniki.
Budget airlines are perhaps more susceptible to refueling stops because they typically operate only one type of airplane.
Their single-aisle jets are already near their maximum range for flights between the Middle East and Europe.
Meanwhile, the likes of British Airways and Air France are flying to Dubai with Boeing 777 or 787 jets. These twin-aisle airplanes have much larger fuel tanks, so any rerouting won’t require a fuel stop.
Over the past few days, flight-tracking data shows British Airways’ flight from Dubai to London has flown over Saudi Arabia instead of Iraq — taking around an hour longer than usual.
Earlier this month, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency warned airlines not to fly over Iran.
“The presence and potential use of weapons and air defense systems create a high risk for civilian flights,” it said in a statement, per Reuters. “There is a high probability of misidentification, against the backdrop of a possible American attack as well as the high alert status of Iran’s air defense systems.”
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