If you've flown between Europe and India or Southeast Asia lately, there's a decent chance your plane crossed Afghanistan, and that for an hour or so, nobody on the ground was directing it. Is it safe to fly over Afghanistan? Airlines have decided it's safe enough. With Russia off-limits to most airlines and Iran's skies closed, Afghanistan has become one of the main corridors between the two continents, even though it hasn't had working air traffic control since 2021.
Global air traffic control is one of the most coordinated systems in the world. Almost every country with an international airport, and even some without one, runs its own flight information region, or FIR, the block of sky its controllers are responsible for. A few countries have gone long stretches without controllers of their own, like Somalia, whose skies were managed from neighboring Kenya for years. But no country sees as many international flights pass overhead without a working air traffic control system as Afghanistan. With so many planes crossing the Kabul FIR and no controllers to guide them, airlines and neighboring countries have had to build an unusual workaround.
Why Afghanistan Has No Air Traffic Control
Afghanistan's air traffic control shut down in August 2021, when the United States completed its withdrawal and the US-backed government in Kabul fell to the Taliban. But the system was never fully self-sufficient, even while US troops were there. A 2015 audit by the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction found the country had just 36 air traffic controllers, when it needed at least 55 at its two largest airports alone. That shortfall left Afghan airspace heavily dependent on foreign training, funding and support, all of which stopped after the Taliban took over.
How Planes Cross Without It
To fill the gap, the International Civil Aviation Organization, the UN agency that sets global aviation rules, worked with Afghanistan's neighbors on a set of high-altitude routes that airlines are expected to follow across the country. The Taliban-run civil aviation authority, meanwhile, requires airlines to get permission and pay a fee to cross. Western governments still haven't given the all-clear. The US bans its airlines from flying below 32,000 feet over Afghanistan, apart from two set routes where they can drop to 30,000, and European regulators rate the risk as high below that height.
So why do airlines fly there at all? Mostly because the alternatives have disappeared. Flights between Europe and Southeast Asia used to cross Russia or Iran, and neither is an option for most airlines now. That has made Afghanistan likely the busiest uncontrolled airspace in the world.
More traffic doesn't mean the skies have become safer. The rules governing Afghan airspace haven't changed in any meaningful way since the Taliban took power. Airlines are making a calculation: flying a set of fixed, well-known routes through uncontrolled airspace is safer than flying over an active war zone.
Flying Over Afghanistan
How Planes Cross Without Air Traffic Control
Why fly there at all? Russia and Iran are closed to most airlines, so Afghanistan is now a main route between Europe and Asia.
Contrail
The system leans heavily on the countries next door. Controllers in neighboring countries like Pakistan and Tajikistan space out planes before they enter Afghan airspace, holding them back if needed so there are at least 15 minutes between aircraft at the same height. Once inside, pilots keep each other apart themselves. They all stay on the same radio frequency and announce their position and altitude every few minutes, a procedure called TIBA, short for traffic information broadcasts by aircraft, so everyone nearby knows where everyone else is. None of this replaces real air traffic control, but it gives airlines enough confidence to keep flying.
What Happens in an Emergency
These measures work well enough on an ordinary day. The trouble is an emergency. With no controllers to talk to, a crew in trouble over Afghanistan can only be heard by other pilots on the frequency or by controllers in neighboring countries, and neither can do much to help guide a descent, find a safe route down or line up a place to land. Kabul's airport used to offer at least some help, but its approach control, the unit that guides planes in and out of the area around the airport, has been out of service since early October, with no public date for its return.
What Should Change
Afghanistan's lack of air traffic control may not be the biggest risk airlines face on these routes, but it puts extra strain on everyone else, from pilots who have to keep track of the traffic around them to controllers next door picking up the slack Kabul has left. So far, no major airliner emergency over Afghanistan has been publicly reported since the system broke down. If one happens, this patchwork will be put to an extreme test.
The current setup works, at least for now. But the responsible move for Afghanistan is to rebuild a real air traffic control system and bring its skies in line with the rest of the world. That would be hard, especially with the Taliban's restrictions on education and employment. Yet having controllers again could bring even more flights through Afghan airspace, and maybe, one day, more flights into and out of the country itself.
