An IndiGo flight from Delhi to Manchester was forced to turn back after being airborne for nearly eight hours over Ethiopia, even though the aircraft had completely skirted the conflict-affected Persian Gulf region, effectively turning the journey into a 14-hour flight that ended back where it began.
The prolonged diversion was triggered by confusion at air traffic authorities in Eritrea over a permit filed by IndiGo, sources said.
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The Boeing 787 aircraft, which IndiGo has leased from Norwegian carrier Norse, took off from Delhi at 12.30 a.m. on Monday. Flight tracking website Flightradar 24 shows that it avoided the entire Gulf region, entered Africa through Ethiopia and was flying over Eritrea when it did a u-turn and started returning to Delhi. It landed at Delhi at 2.30 p.m.
Sunday (March 8, 2026) marked the first day of IndiGo’s partial resumption of flights to Europe after a gap of more than a week, and its first service to Manchester since February 26. It is using a longer diversionary routing over Africa to avoid the affected airspace.
