Pakistan-India Tension Triggers Trip Replanning

Corporate flight departments and flight handlers are recalibrating trip plans in the wake of intensified hostilities between Pakistan and India. “It will affect air travel,” Pete Lewis, senior v-p of global trip operations at Universal Weather and Aviation, told AIN yesterday at the 2019 NBAA International Operators Conference (IOC) in San Francisco. Many of the more than 700 corporate pilots and flight support specialists attending IOC fly over or into the region or service operators that do.

“Twenty years ago, not many people flew over that airspace,” Lewis said. “Some might remember the old Purple routes when it was difficult to get a permit, but it’s well-traveled today.”

Universal is contacting customers with planned trips to the region, “alerting them to what we know” and advising them that “plenty of alternatives for safe routing are available,” Lewis said. “Airspace closures around the world are not terribly unusual. We still warn people [about flying] around certain areas in that vicinity as well,” but with proper planning resources, operators needn’t “get afraid about traveling.”

Meanwhile, the flight dispatch team at Dubai-based Jetex Flight Support is also monitoring the situation and advising customers, Jetex manager of North American business development Caterina Taylor said at IOC.