Bizav Roadblock: Turkey and Armenia

Key Points

Ongoing issue since May 2023 – Turkey will not allow overflight if you’re flying to or from Armenia.
This currently appears to only affect bizav flights.
Some operators are making a tech-stop in Georgia to fix the problem.

Turkish Ban

Back in May 2023, Armenian airline Flyone operating a Paris-Yerevan flight had to make an emergency landing in Chisinau after being denied entry to Turkish airspace.

Turkey reportedly applied this last-minute ban in response to a monument erected in Yerevan the previous week, which they were unhappy about.

Since then, Flyone have evidently managed to resume Turkey overflights, but it seems that this restriction is still being informally applied to bizav overflight requests today.

Oct 30: FlyOne from Chisinau to Yerevan merrily overflying Turkish airspace again.

OPSGROUP Member Reports

There’s still no Notam published on this issue. But some operators are making a tech-stop in Georgia to fix the problem.

Two new Airport Spy reports from October 2023 have been received from OPSGROUP members, where they required a tech-stop at UGTB/Tibilisi (Georgia) before continuing on to UDYZ/Yerevan (Armenia) in order to overfly Turkish airspace:

The LTAA/Ankara and LTBB/Istanbul FIR Notams are still void of any mention of restrictions on overflights to and from Armenia. So is the Turkish AIP.

We’ve reached out to Turkey’s Civil Aviation Authority directly and as yet, haven’t had a reply. We’ll keep this article updated if we hear back…

Until then, it seems it is a flight planning hurdle that needs a work-around. The answer so far seems to be a stop enroute to/from Armenia or to avoid Turkish airspace completely – a less practical alternative.

Spy Reports

If you have found another way around this restriction, or have encountered it yourself, please let us know by submitting an Airport Spy report. You can also reach us directly on news@ops.group.

OPSGROUP members can access the full Airport Spy database via the members dashboard here.

Turkey or Türkiye?

Just a final note on this… In June 2022, the United Nations agreed to a formal request to recognise Turkey as “Türkiye”, as part of a rebranding campaign launched by the Turkish president.

However, ICAO are still using the name “Turkey”, and no major media outlets have changed their spelling.

So for now at least, Turkey remains Turkey.

Bizav Roadblock: Turkey and Armenia