Pakistan closes airspace to Taiwanese airlines in support of Beijing’s ‘One China’ Policy

Pakistan has fully closed its airspace to Taiwanese airlines in support of China’s “One China” policy.

Speaking to Bloomberg News on Wednesday, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said Pakistan’s aviation division was implementing the “One China” policy, under which only mainland Chinese airlines were permitted to use Pakistani airspace.

“Our aviation division is following the ‘One China’ policy, under which only mainland China is permitted. We have allowed only Chinese airlines to fly over Pakistan,” he said.

According to flight-tracking data from Flightradar24, Taiwan’s major airlines, China Airlines Ltd. and EVA Airways Corp., began changing their flight routes over the past weekend. Both airlines completely stopped using Pakistani airspace from the morning of October 25.

Since Sunday, at least a dozen of their flights between Asia and Europe have flown over Russia.

According to Bloomberg, China Airlines and EVA Air declined to comment on the matter, while Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs had not issued an immediate response.

Taiwan’s Civil Aviation Administration did not comment on the rerouting of flights but said it had never prohibited Taiwanese airlines from flying over Russian airspace.

Although Russia had never formally imposed a ban on Taiwanese airlines, they had generally avoided Russian airspace since the war in Ukraine began, as had many airlines from Asia, Europe and North America.

Bloomberg reported that Pakistan’s latest restrictions were even stricter than mainland China’s own policy, as China allows Taiwanese airlines to use its airspace.

Taiwanese airlines had relied heavily on Pakistani airspace for flights between Asia and Europe. According to the data, 14 flights operated by the two airlines crossed Pakistani airspace on October 24.

The airlines have now been forced to change their routes, taking longer paths through southern Asia, the Middle East or Russia. These diversions have added several hours to flight durations.

The longer routes and additional distances are expected to significantly increase jet fuel consumption and costs, potentially dealing a major financial blow to Taiwanese airlines.