The crew announced to passengers who were waiting for departure for three hours in the cabin that they were waiting for a response from the Russian side, but it was received, and therefore the flight would have to be postponed to May 27, RBC reports.
Airline Air France among other European airlines earlier announced the suspension of flights over Belarus after the relevant EU recommendations. A similar decision was made by the Finnish airline Finnair, German Lufthansa, Latvian AirBaltic, Dutch KLM, Austrian Airlines and others.
Restrictions on flights to Belarus and through its airspace were adopted after the incident with a passenger plane of the Irish airline Ryanair, which occurred on 23 May. Then the liner, flying from Athens to Vilnius, was forced to change course and land in Minsk because of a false message about a bomb on board. This flight was flown by the former editor-in-chief of the Nexta telegram channel recognized in Belarus as extremist, Roman Protasevich, and his friend, Russian woman Sofia Sapega. After the liner landed, they were detained and then arrested. Ryanair chief Michael O'Leary called the incident "a state-supported hijacking".
Today Poland did not allow the plane of the Belarusian airline Belavia, which was flying from Minsk to Barcelona, into its airspace.