An Air India flight en route to Kyiv to bring back Indian citizens was forced to turn back mid-way on Thursday morning because Ukraine closed its airspace after Russian forces launched an attack on that country from three directions. The flight was one of the special ferry services that India started on Wednesday to repatriate around 18,000 Indian nationals, mostly students, from Ukraine.
AI 1947 took off from Indira Gandhi International Airport at 7.30 a.m. and was airborne for two hours when it turned back. This was the second repatriation flight planned by Air India this week. A flight on Tuesday brought back 242 passengers, comprising mostly of students.
The Ukrainian State Air Traffic Services Enterprise announced early on Thursday morning that it was closing Ukraine’s airspace for civilian users due to the “high risk of aviation safety”. This followed restrictions imposed by Russia on civilian air traffic in the airspace of northeastern Ukraine.