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London (AFP)
Hundreds of pbadengers were stranded in Britain Tuesday after the European aviation authorities suspended Turkmenistan Airlines for security reasons.
The isolated Central African Republic airline offers services from London and Birmingham to the Indian city of Amritsar, very popular with the British Punjabi community.
The British Civil Aviation Authority cited an opinion from its European counterpart announcing the suspension of flights on Monday.
"The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has suspended Turkmenistan Airlines flights to and from the EU pending confirmation of its compliance with international aviation safety standards," the statement said. British Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a separate travel notice.
The airline itself has not provided any information on its website. The listed phone number was not in use and no one responded to emails.
The website still lists all its European destinations, but no longer takes bookings from Paris or Frankfurt.
Britishwoman Jane McCarron said she planned to fly to Amritsar from Birmingham next Tuesday and that she did not know if she needed to make any new arrangements.
"I just want to know if I can go next Tuesday," she told AFP by e-mail.
"My ticket is not refundable and the airline does not answer their calls."
The airline also connects Paris and Frankfurt to popular Asian destinations such as New Delhi and Bangkok via the Turkmen capital Ashgabat.
He was still taking reservations from Moscow and St. Petersburg to Ashgabat and Bangkok.
The carrier indicates on its website that it carries approximately 3,000 pbadengers a day.
"The Turkmenistan Airlines fleet includes only modern Western planes (such as Boeing 717,737,757,777, Challenger and Hawker)," the site said.
We did not know immediately what motivated the suspension or when the flights could resume.
Turkmenistan is a former Soviet state, rich in energy but authoritarian, with a poor track record in human rights and media completely controlled by the state.
The government-run airline was established in the first full year of independence of Turkmenistan in 1992.
© 2019 AFP
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