Is It Safe to Fly Over Yemen? EASA's Yemen Bulletin CZIB-2017-07R20, the Sana'a FIR, the B400 Exception, and Why Your Red Sea Flight Hugs the Coast

Open a flight tracker on an evening when the Europe to Asia and Africa traffic is moving and look at the southern end of the Red Sea. You will see a surprising amount of it: flights from Europe to the Seychelles, Mauritius and East Africa, Gulf carriers heading to Africa, and Indian Ocean traffic all threading through a corridor of water between Eritrea and Yemen. What you will almost never see is an airliner over Yemen itself. The country is one of the longest-standing entries on EASA's conflict zone list, and its bulletin was renewed again on 30 September 2026.

This post explains what EASA's Yemen bulletin CZIB-2017-07R20 actually says, why the recommendation has a narrow exception for routes over the sea, how the US, UK, German, French, Canadian and Italian positions differ in ways that matter for which airline you fly, what the Houthi missile and drone activity of 2026 changes, and how to check whether your own flight will touch the Sana'a FIR.

What the bulletin says

EASA's Conflict Zone Information Bulletin for Yemen is CZIB-2017-07R20. It was first issued on 31 August 2017 and is now on its twentieth revision. The latest, dated 30 September 2026, extended the validity to 30 April 2027 unless reviewed earlier and, according to EASA's own revision note, made no change to the content or the recommendations. The affected airspace is the whole of Yemen's flight information region, the Sana'a FIR, ICAO code OYSC, at all altitudes, with one exception: routes located in the maritime part of the FIR east of route B400, including B400 itself.

The recommendation is in two parts. Air operators should not operate in the Sana'a FIR at any altitude or flight level, except on those maritime routes east of B400, where they are advised to exercise caution at all flight levels. They should also closely monitor developments and follow the aeronautical publications issued by Yemen or on its behalf by neighbouring states, along with information shared through the European conflict-zone platform and guidance from their national authorities.

EASA assesses the risk over Yemeni territory as HIGH at all altitudes, and the risk on the maritime routes east of B400 as MEDIUM. If you have read our explainer on [EASA's conflict zone bulletins](/blog/easa-conflict-zone-bulletins-middle-east-explained), you will recognise the structure: a bulletin is advice to EASA operators and to third-country operators flying to and from the EU, not a legal closure of the airspace, and national regulators layer their own rules on top.

Why the assessment is HIGH at every altitude

Most conflict-zone bulletins come with a floor. Afghanistan's says do not fly below FL320; several Middle East bulletins distinguish between overflight at cruising level and arrivals and departures. Yemen's does not, and the reasoning in the bulletin text is specific. EASA describes a security situation characterised by recurrent high-intensity military operations, the involvement of Iranian-backed Houthi forces in the wider Middle East conflict, political instability, and violent non-state actors with access to advanced anti-aviation weaponry.

The bulletin notes that since late March 2026, Houthi forces have conducted ballistic missile and unmanned aircraft attacks against Israel, demonstrating both the capability and the intent to strike at long range. Combined with the presence and possible use of surface-to-air missile systems, EASA judges that this raises the risk of a civil aircraft being misidentified and engaged by mistake. That last phrase is the one that removes the altitude floor: a long-range surface-to-air system does not care whether you are at FL300 or FL400, and the history of civil aviation losses over conflict zones is overwhelmingly a history of misidentification.

This is why Yemen is treated differently from a country where the threat is small arms and short-range rockets. There, flying high is a real mitigation. Here, the assessment is that it is not.

The B400 exception, and what it means for the Red Sea corridor

Route B400 runs through the maritime part of the Sana'a FIR, and everything east of it, including the route itself, is the part of the FIR where EASA says caution rather than do not operate. In practice this carves out a slice of the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea side of the FIR, well away from the Yemeni mainland and the Red Sea coast, where oceanic traffic between the Gulf, East Africa and the Indian Ocean can pass.

Notice what the exception does not include: the Red Sea. The western, maritime part of the Sana'a FIR over the southern Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb strait is inside the do-not-operate area. That is why the dense stream of Red Sea traffic you see on a tracker stays on the African side of the sea, in Egyptian, Sudanese, Eritrean and Djibouti-controlled airspace, rather than splitting the difference down the middle. The corridor is narrow, which is one reason the Red Sea is also one of the busiest stretches of airspace for GPS interference reports; our guide to [GPS jamming and spoofing](/blog/gps-jamming-spoofing-flights-2026) covers that separate problem.

The exception also explains an apparent contradiction passengers sometimes notice: a flight that shows Yemen in its route details but never crosses the coast. Flight plans are filed by FIR, and a route through the eastern maritime part of OYSC is a route through Yemen's FIR without being a route over Yemen.

How the national positions differ

EASA's bulletin is the European baseline, but the state advisories collected on safeairspace.net show meaningful differences in how far each regulator goes, and they decide what a given airline can and cannot do.

• **United States:** SFAR 115, issued 7 January 2025 and valid to 7 January 2028, prohibits US operators from overflying the land area of the Sana'a FIR north of a defined line. Two offshore routes, UT702 and M999, are explicitly permitted. This is a prohibition with the force of regulation, not advice.
• **Germany:** AIC 03/26, a Level 3 do-not-enter notice, prohibits German operators from the Sana'a FIR except for the maritime part east of B400, mirroring EASA's exception.
• **France:** AIC 011/26 tells operators to avoid Yemeni airspace, allowing oceanic routes east of B400 only at or above FL320. France adds an altitude floor to the exception that EASA leaves open.
• **Canada:** AIC 17/26, a Level 2 recommendation, advises against entering the FIR northwest of a line defined by the PAKER, ORBAT and NORMA waypoints on UT702.
• **Italy:** a NOTAM issued 1 September 2026 and valid to 29 November 2026 recommends avoiding the Sana'a FIR and the southern Red Sea at all altitudes, the most sweeping of the European positions.
• **United Kingdom:** the UK AIP has recommended against entering the Sana'a FIR since 2015, with the exceptions of airways N315, UL425 and R401.

What changed in 2026

The practical consequence of those differences is that two aircraft on the same city pair can legitimately take different routes depending on whose rules the operator follows. A US carrier is bound by SFAR 115's route list; a French operator has an FL320 floor on the oceanic exception; a German operator can use the maritime area with a documented risk assessment. None of them will be over the Yemeni mainland, and that part is universal. What has shifted is the picture around that mainland.

The bulletin's own text was last substantively revised to reflect the Houthi strikes on Israel that began in late March 2026, and the 30 September revision only extended the date. But the operational picture around Yemen has kept moving. Sana'a airport has remained closed since the Israeli airstrikes of December 2024, and in July 2026 Yemeni government forces struck the Sana'a runway to prevent an Iranian aircraft from landing. In October 2026 a missile landed near the runway at Aden as a flight from Cairo was on approach; the aircraft diverted to Jeddah. Fighting around the Bab el-Mandeb strait has intensified in the same month.

None of this changes the EASA recommendation, because the recommendation already assumes the worst case. What it does change is the margin for the exceptions. An incident at Aden, which sits on the Gulf of Aden coast, is uncomfortably close to the maritime routes that the exception permits, and it is the kind of event that leads to a bulletin revision rather than a simple extension. If you are planning travel that depends on an East Africa or Indian Ocean routing over the next few months, the EASA list is worth checking for a new revision date on this bulletin, as we explained in our post on [how to read a NOTAM](/blog/what-is-a-notam-how-to-read-airspace-closure-notices).

Which flights are affected

Very few scheduled passenger flights have any reason to cross the Yemeni mainland, because the natural great-circle routes between Europe and India, Southeast Asia or Australia pass well to the north, over Saudi Arabia, the Gulf and Oman. The flights that come closest are:

• Europe and the Gulf to East Africa and the Indian Ocean islands, which use the Red Sea corridor on the African side and then cross the Gulf of Aden region towards Djibouti and Somalia.
• Gulf carriers to East and Southern Africa, which may use the eastern maritime part of the Sana'a FIR where their national authority allows it.
• Flights to and from Aden itself, the only international airport in Yemen that has been operating, which obviously enter the FIR and which the October 2026 incident shows carry their own risk.
• Indian Ocean routings between the Gulf and the Seychelles, Maldives or Mauritius, which skirt the Arabian Sea side of the FIR.

How to check your own flight

If your itinerary is on any of those routes, the question is not whether the airline will fly over Yemen, because it will not, but which exception it uses and how the neighbouring airspaces, Saudi Arabia's Jeddah FIR to the north and Somalia's to the south, are being handled. Both have their own active bulletins; our posts on [the Saudi Arabia bulletin](/blog/easa-saudi-arabia-airspace-bulletin-czib-2026-09-jeddah-fir) and on [the Persian Gulf bulletin](/blog/is-it-safe-to-fly-over-the-persian-gulf-easa-gulf-bulletin-czib-2026-07r3-bahrain-kuwait-doha-emirates-muscat-fir) cover the northern neighbours.

The honest answer to is it safe to fly over Yemen is that, for the overwhelming majority of passengers, the question will never arise, because no European, American, Canadian or Gulf airline will route a scheduled flight over the mainland while this bulletin and these national rules stand. The question worth asking is narrower: does my flight use the maritime exception, and whose rules does my airline follow?

• Look up the operating airline's country and check its regulator's position in the list above. A US airline follows SFAR 115 whatever EASA says; an EU airline follows its national AIC on top of the EASA bulletin.
• Check a previous day's track for your flight number on a flight tracker and look for where it crosses between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. A track that passes south of the Yemeni coast over water, east of the Bab el-Mandeb, is using the maritime exception.
• Check the EASA bulletin list for a revision date later than 30 September 2026 on CZIB-2017-07R20. A new revision, rather than an extension, usually means the maritime exception has been tightened or removed.
• Use our [guide to checking whether a flight avoids conflict zones](/blog/how-to-check-if-your-flight-avoids-conflict-zones) for the general method, including how to read an FIR boundary on a map.

The short version

EASA says do not fly over Yemen at any altitude, with a cautious exception for oceanic routes east of B400 in the Gulf of Aden side of the Sana'a FIR. The United States prohibits overflight of the mainland outright for its operators but permits two offshore routes; France and Germany mirror the EASA exception with their own conditions; Italy and the UK recommend avoidance. The bulletin runs to 30 April 2027 and was last revised in substance to reflect the Houthi long-range strikes of 2026. Your flight will not cross Yemen; the only thing that varies is how wide a berth it gives the coast, and that depends on who operates it.