The French liner could not fly over Russia and returned to Paris

The crew of the Air France flight Paris-Ho Chi Minh, who during the flight found out that he had no permission to fly over the territory of Russia, was offered to solve this problem promptly, but he refused and turned around, deciding not to continue the flight, the representative of Rosaviation told Interfax.
Earlier, Europe 1, referring to the passenger of this flight, reported that on 1 November, the Air France passenger aircraft was forced to return to the departure point due to the lack of permission to enter the airspace of the Russian Federation. According to the passenger, a few hours after departure from Charles de Gaulle airport, the flight commander reported that the plane would return back, as he does not have permission to fly over Russian territory. The girl noted that the pilot admitted that he had never encountered such a thing in all his work.


In the Federal Air Transport Agency they noted that AF-258 Paris-Ho Chi Minh’s flight for a long time was made on a route that did not affect Russia's airspace and, accordingly, did not require any permissions from the Russian side. However, on November 1, the route of this flight was significantly changed, although the French side did not warn about this.
According to the Federal Air Transport Agency, when the plane flew over Belarus, the Russian air traffic controllers warned him that he did not have permission, but at the same time they said that the FSUE “State Corporation for the Organization of Air Traffic in the Russian Federation” was ready to promptly process the request and allow overflight over the territory of Russia. However, according to the agency, the crew thanked the dispatchers for the assistance offered and decided to stop the flight without entering the airspace of the Russian Federation.
“Most likely, this situation has arisen as a result of a failure in the software of the flights of AirFrance,” the Federal Air Transport Agency said, recalling that Russia is linked by long-term mutually beneficial cooperation with AirFrance and the French aviation authorities.
The press service of Air France confirmed this incident to the Europe 1 radio stations, saying that its likely cause was a failure to update the route while changing the schedule from summer to winter, which occurs on October 31. They noted that the problem was promptly resolved.
Some of the passengers who returned to Paris were redirected to other flights, and the rest were placed at the hotel overnight before they could fly the same flight on Friday.