The skies over the Paris region will be closed for six hours as part of the massive security operation for the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games on July 26, the operator of Paris airports said on Wednesday.
Augustin de Romanet, president of Aéroports de Paris, said airlines are being warned in advance about the closure and have been told they will have to fly around restricted airspace.
“For six hours there will be no plane flying over the Paris region,” he told France Info radio.
The no-fly zone will extend a 150-kilometer (93-mile) radius around Paris, the civil aviation authority and Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said.
The unprecedented on-water ceremony on the River Seine that runs through the French capital is the toughest security challenge for Paris Games organizers, with crowds of more than 320,000 expected to line the waterway.
At least one French military AWACS surveillance plane will monitor the skies during the Olympics, using its powerful radar to detect potential aerial threats, the commander of the French AWACS squadron previously told The Associated Press. Other military aircraft may be sent to intercept any unauthorized flights entering restricted Olympic airspace.
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Separately, de Romanet said there is still a “very, very high” probability that small electric air taxis will be tested with passengers over Paris during the July 26 to August 26 trip. 11 games that, according to him, would be a world first.
But European air certification authorities could initially allow taxis to carry passengers only on an experimental basis, not commercially, he added.
“We have high hopes of being able to carry passengers experimentally, which will pave the way, over Paris, for the world’s first flight of an electric vertical take-off aircraft,” he said.
Several companies are developing electric airplanes that take off and land vertically. Some have already carried out demonstration flights, in a race to turn their promises of environmentally friendly air transport into a commercially viable reality.
De Romanet insisted the plane is safe, saying: “I’m ready to get on board.”
Critics fear that the taxis in Paris are a noisy and potentially dangerous nuisance and may only be affordable to the wealthy. The socialist mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, is among those opposing proposals to test them on some routes in the Paris region during the Games.
© 2024 The Canadian Press