Pakistan Extends Airspace Ban on Indian Aircraft Till November 24
Karachi: Pakistan has extended its airspace ban on Indian aircraft for another month, until November 24, according to a Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) issued by the Pakistan Airports Authority (PAA) — continuing a restriction that has been in place since April 2025 amid strained relations between the two neighbouring countries.
The PAA announced the extension in a post on X on Saturday, saying the restriction covers Indian-registered aircraft as well as aircraft owned, operated or leased by Indian airlines and operators — and also applies to military flights. A PAA spokesperson said a fresh NOTAM had been issued to extend the ban, according to reports in Geo News. The latest extension will remain in effect until 4:59 a.m. (local time) on November 24, 2026.
Pakistan's airspace is divided into two flight information regions (FIRs) — Karachi and Lahore — and the latest NOTAM applies to both regions. The notice stated plainly: "Pakistan airspace not available for Indian registered aircraft and aircraft operated/owned or leased by Indian airlines/operators, including military flights."
The restriction was initially imposed on April 23, 2025, and has been extended periodically since then. The previous extension was due to expire on October 24. The ban followed the April 2025 terror attack in Pahalgam, Jammu and Kashmir, after which India accused Pakistan of involvement — an allegation Islamabad denied while calling for a neutral investigation.
India closed its own airspace to Pakistani airlines on April 30, 2025, in response to Pakistan's move, making the restrictions reciprocal.
Tensions escalated sharply in May 2025, when India launched strikes on several Pakistani cities on May 6 and 7, and Pakistan responded with Operation Bunyanum Marsoos, targeting multiple Indian military installations. The hostilities lasted nearly 87 hours before the two nuclear-armed neighbours agreed to a US-brokered ceasefire on May 10, 2025.
The continuing airspace restrictions have had a greater financial impact on India's aviation sector than on Pakistan's, aviation analysts note, because a far larger volume of Indian international traffic historically transited Pakistani airspace.
Indian carriers operating flights to Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia have been forced to take longer routes around Pakistani airspace, burning additional fuel and adding flight time to journeys that previously overflew the country. Airlines have absorbed much of this cost, though fares on some affected routes have edged upward over the past year.
Pakistan has imposed airspace restrictions on Indian aircraft during previous periods of heightened tensions, including the 1999 Kargil conflict and the 2019 Pulwama crisis. Each episode caused greater operational challenges for Indian airlines than for Pakistani carriers, reflecting the asymmetry of the two countries' international route networks.
During the 2019 closure, for instance, Air India estimated losses running into hundreds of crores of rupees over several months of diverted operations.
The PAA's announcement on Saturday followed its established pattern of issuing extensions just before the existing NOTAM expires, keeping the aviation industry in a holding pattern of monthly uncertainty. The spokesperson confirmed that the new NOTAM applies to both the Karachi (OPKR) and Lahore (OPLR) flight information regions, meaning the restriction blankets the entirety of Pakistani-controlled airspace.
Military flights are explicitly included, closing off an option that some countries occasionally negotiate separately during civilian restrictions.
Aviation experts say the long-running closure has quietly reshaped routing strategies for Indian carriers. Airlines have redrawn flight paths over Iran, the Arabian Sea and Central Asia, added fuel stops where necessary and renegotiated crew duty-time planning for the longer sectors. Overflight rights through alternative corridors have become strategically valuable, and Indian carriers have pressed their case for route rationalisation in international aviation forums.
Meanwhile, Pakistani carriers — with a far smaller international footprint — have faced comparatively limited disruption from India's reciprocal closure.
The airspace standoff is one of several threads of the frozen relationship that followed the Pahalgam attack and the May 2025 military confrontation. Other channels — trade, people-to-people contact, sporting ties and diplomatic presence — remain at minimal levels, and successive efforts at back-channel engagement have produced no public breakthrough.
In that context, the monthly airspace extensions serve as a barometer of the broader stalemate: routine enough to barely make headlines, persistent enough to signal that normalisation is not on the horizon.
The origins of the current closure lie in the bloodiest escalation between the two countries in decades. After the April 2025 attack in Pahalgam — in which 26 people, most of them tourists, were killed — Pakistan's top civilian and military leadership announced a series of retaliatory measures on April 24, including the immediate closure of Pakistani airspace to all India-owned or Indian-operated airlines.
India had alleged Pakistani backing for the attack; Islamabad denied involvement and offered to support a neutral investigation.
The airspace moves were followed by the May 6 and 7 strikes and Pakistan's retaliatory Operation Bunyanum Marsoos, with both sides claiming successes in the air battle — Pakistan asserting it had shot down multiple Indian aircraft, including Rafales, a claim India did not confirm — before a US-brokered ceasefire on May 10 ended nearly 87 hours of confrontation.
Since then, the ban has been extended month after month with metronomic regularity. Each NOTAM renewal resets the clock but changes nothing on the ground: the same routes remain blocked, the same diversions remain in force, and the same costs keep accumulating.
Indian aviation bodies have occasionally raised the issue in multilateral settings, arguing that prolonged airspace closures distort competition and penalise carriers that had nothing to do with the political dispute — though such interventions have not shifted the status quo.
Whether the November 24 deadline brings a change of course or yet another extension will be watched closely by the aviation industry on both sides of the border — and by the passengers who continue to pay, in time and money, for the stalemate between the two neighbours.
Until then, the message from Islamabad is unchanged: its skies remain closed to Indian aircraft, and the clock simply restarts for another month, as it has done so many times before.
(Reporting based on The Hindu, NDTV and Geo News.)