War in the Middle East: an Air France plane finds itself in flight during an attack

Wednesday 09th October 2024 05:56 PM

A plane at the heart of tensions. The situation has been extremely tense in the Middle East for more than a year, against the backdrop of a rekindled conflict between Israel and Palestine. In this context, Iran fired some 200 ballistic missiles at Israel while crossing Iraq on the evening of 1^is October 2024, in response to the Israeli offensive in Lebanon. An attack near which Air France flight AF662 passed, as revealed LCI .

Missiles seen live

Departing from Paris Charles-de-Gaulle airport towards Dubai (United Arab Emirates) at 2:17 p.m., according to FlightAware, the aircraft would have flown over Iraq at the same time as the missiles crossed. The company’s planes avoided Israeli, Lebanese and Iranian airspace. Flying over Iraqi airspace was limited to a specific corridor used by airlines.

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The fact remains that according to information from our colleagues, the pilots “saw the missiles from the cockpit”. In a statement, Air France detailed that the plane was in the south of the country when the attack on Iran began, around 4:45 p.m. GMT (6:45 p.m. French time). The altitude of the planes was, fortunately, much lower than that used by the missiles sent by Iran.

A question of timing

The aircraft maintaining this trajectory may come as a surprise, even though the company had asked Paris-Bombay flight AF218 to turn around before entering Iraqi airspace. Especially since the management of the company indicated to our colleagues that it had “information” ahead of Iran’s attack on Israel, and having suspended flights over the country’s airspace by its planes from 7 p.m., “without waiting for Iraqi instructions”.

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In reality, the aircraft only remained in Iraqi airspace alongside the missiles for a quarter of an hour. He left him before he was even “officially closed by local authorities until 5:56 p.m. GMT” (7:56 p.m. French time). In all cases, the elected commissioners of the CSSCT (health, safety and working conditions commission) of Air France were informed of the incident.