Major airlines from around the world on Friday began rerouting their flights to avoid areas around the Strait of Hormuz following Iran\u2019s shooting down of a US military surveillance drone there, as America warned commercial airliners could be mistakenly attacked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Federal Aviation Administration warned of a \u201cpotential for miscalculation or misidentification\u201d in the region after an Iranian surface-to-air missile on Thursday brought down a US Navy RQ-4A Global Hawk, an unmanned aircraft with a wingspan larger than a Boeing 737 jetliner and costing over USD 100 million.The US said it made plans for limited strikes on Iran in response, but then called them off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The FAA previously warned of a risk in the region, but Friday\u2019s warning threw into stark relief a danger that both the agency and analysts say is real 7after the shooting down of a Malaysian Airlines flight over Ukraine in 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That could further imperil the bottom lines of Gulf long-haul carriers, which already have faced challenges under the Trump administration.Australia\u2019s Qantas, British Airways, Dutch carrier KLM, Emirates, Germany\u2019s Lufthansa, Malaysia Airlines and Singapore Airlines said soon afterward that they will avoid the region as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The FAA made a similar warning in May to commercial airliners of the possibility of Iranian anti-aircraft gunners mistaking them for military aircraft, something dismissed by Tehran some 30 years after the US Navy shot down an Iranian passenger jet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The FAA\u2019s operations center referred questions to its press office, which did not immediately respond to queries from The Associated Press.However, that likely only extends some 12 miles off of the Iranian coast, aviation experts said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are \u201cheightened military activities and increased political tensions in the region, which present an inadvertent risk to US civil aviation operations and potential for miscalculation or misidentification,\u201d the FAA said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe risk to US civil aviation is demonstrated by the Iranian surface-to-air missile shoot-down of a US unmanned aircraft system on 19 June 2019 while it was operating in the vicinity of civil air routes above the Gulf of Oman.\u201d Qantas said it would reroute its London flights to avoid the Strait of Hormuz and Gulf of Oman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
British Airways, KLM, Malaysia Airlines and Singapore Airlines said their flights would avoid the strait.Lufthansa said it would avoid both the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman, as well as nearby land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Persian Gulf is home to some of the world\u2019s top long-haul carriers, who already have been battered by Trump\u2019s travel bans targeting a group of predominantly Muslim countries, as well as an earlier ban on laptops in airplane cabins for Mideast carriers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe will decide what further action is required after carefully evaluating the FAA directive to US carriers,\u201d the carrier told The Associated Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Emirates, the long-haul carrier in Dubai near the Strait of Hormuz, said in a statement to AP that it was \u201crerouting all flights away from areas of possible conflict.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Its sister airline, the low-cost carrier FlyDubai, said it \u201cadjusted some of the existing flight paths in the region as a precautionary measure.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Iran said the drone \u201cviolated\u201d its territorial airspace, while the US called the missile fire \u201can unprovoked attack\u201d in international airspace over the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
OPSGROUP said the Iranian weapons system that shot down the drone was comparable to the Russian Buk system used in 2014 Malaysian Airlines shootdown in Ukraine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Major airlines from around the world on Friday began rerouting their flights to avoid areas around the Strait of Hormuz following Iran\u2019s shooting down of a US military surveillance drone there, as America warned commercial airliners could be mistakenly attacked. The Federal Aviation Administration warned of a \u201cpotential for miscalculation or misidentification\u201d in the region […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":64285,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64284"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64286,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64284\/revisions\/64286"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}