The Taliban-led Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation announced on Monday that over the past year, 40,016 flights have traversed Afghan airspace, averaging 111 overflights per day.
Addressing a press conference in Kabul on Monday, the ministry highlighted the provision of services to the state-owned Ariana Afghan Airlines and other domestic and international carriers as key achievements over the past year.
This comes amid reports from Reuters that several international airlines, citing the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and escalating tensions in the Middle East, have opted to use Afghanistan’s airspace for their overflights.
According to these airlines, Afghan airspace is considered safer compared to the conflict zones in Russia, Ukraine, and the Middle East, where skirmishes between Israel and Iranian proxy groups have raised security concerns.
Reuters noted that British Airways, Lufthansa, and Singapore Airlines have increased their use of Afghan airspace as a relatively safer alternative amid the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East.
In addition to the overflights, the Taliban’s Ministry of Transport reported that in the past year, 1,897,273 passengers traveled through Afghanistan’s airports on 12,503 flights. Of these, 774,700 passengers flew domestically, while 1,122,583 traveled internationally.
The ministry also reported that 547,038 cargo vehicles have crossed from Afghanistan into Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Iran, and Pakistan, while 434,709 vehicles entered Afghanistan from neighboring countries.
Three years ago, following the fall of the previous government and the Taliban’s return to power, Afghanistan’s air traffic control systems were disrupted, leading many airlines to suspend flights through Afghanistan’s airspace. Although these services have yet to fully resume, airlines now view Afghanistan’s airspace as less perilous than the airspace between Iran and Israel.
