EU, EASA recommend avoiding Lebanon’s airspace until end of Oct.

The European Commission (EU) and the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) issued on Saturday a statement in which they recommended that airline companies "not to operate within the airspace of Lebanon at all flight levels" until the end of October. The EASA said that considering the current conflict between Hezbollah and the Israeli occupation, "there is a high risk to civil aviation". It explained that the conflict involving "rockets, missiles and drones launches from Lebanon and Israeli airstrikes and artillery fire", along with the deployment of air assets operating at various altitudes "increases the risk of misidentification and miscalculation". The statement added that recent intensification of the conflict, with air strikes targeting southern Beirut and the North-East part of the Lebanese territory "marks a sharp escalation in the military activity that constitutes a threat to civil aviation". The agency considered that there is a high-risk in the entire airspace of Lebanon as there are limited mitigating factors on which air operators can rely. The EU Commission and the agency said they will continue to closely monitor the situation with a view to assess whether there is an increase or decrease of the risk for EU aircraft operators due to the evolution of the threat and risk situation, according to the statement. Source: Kuwait News Agency