Passengers spent eight hours flying from Paris to Paris when Iran’s missile strike on Israel closed more than 500,000 square kilometres of airspace.
Air France flight AF218 was already four hours late leaving Charles de Gaulle airport, bound for Mumbai, India, on Tuesday.
It should have take around nine hours to fly the more than 4,000-mile route, but eight hours in, passengers disembarked where they started.
The Airbus A350 had found its route blocked as it approached Turkey’s border with Iraq around 4.30pm UK time.
Iran had just fired a barrage of 180 ballistic missiles, forcing around 80 flights to divert or turn back as Iraq, Jordan, Israel and Lebanon closed their airspace.
They have since been reopened, but many airlines have suspended flights to and from both Israel and Lebanon.
Air France said its flights to Beirut and Tel Aviv won’t resume until at least October 8.
It has since diverted flights over Egypt and Saudi Arabi before continuing its usual Paris-Mumbai route over the Persian Gulf and United Arab Emirates to its final destination.
British Airways was also affected, diverting its London Heathrow to Dubai flight BA107 to Larnaca, Cyprus, as it reached the same area as the Air France flight.
A spokesperson for British Airways said: ‘Safety and security are always our highest priorities and we continuously assess and adjust our operations accordingly.’
The ballistic missiles’ orange tails could be seen from Egypt as they glowed through the night sky over Iraq and Jordan on their way to Israel.
Roughly 90% of them hit their intended targets, including Israeli airbases housing F-35 fighter jets, and the area near its Mossad intelligence service headquarters, according to Iran.
A nearby school was left with an impact crater on its grounds after taking a direct hit from at least one missile when no children were present.
More than 100 homes were also damaged, while dozens were injured, mostly from falling shrapnel after Israel’s air defence system intercepted missiles midair.
Israel had instructed its population of 10 million people to hunker down in bomb shelters when Iran’s missiles started their 15-minute journey.
The attack was ‘nearly twice the scope’ of the barrage of roughly 300 drones and missiles Iran fired in April after Israel assassinated some of its senior military commanders and a Hezbollah member at an embassy compound Syria.
Iran’s latest attack came after Israel’s military launched raids in southern Lebanon on Tuesday morning and killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in an airstrike on Beirut last week.
Just a week prior, at least 37 people died and roughly 3,000 people were injured in the detonation of Hezbollah’s handheld communication devices, which Israel had booby-trapped with explosives.
Israeli airstrikes have killed more than 1,000 people in Lebanon in the last two weeks.
One of Israel’s missiles landed near the British embassy in Beirut last night, killing at least nine people, injuring 14 and engulfing homes in flames.
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