Bahrain: Radar tracks show Qatari jets flying by Emirati airliners

DUBAI: Bahrain released radar tracks on Tuesday it said showed Qatari fighter jets passing by Emirati commercial airliners on their way to the island nation, encounters which started a new dispute between the Gulf nations amid the diplomatic crisis gripping Doha.The UAE will lodge a complaint against Qatar at the UN aviation agency. The UAE will accuse Qatar of violating the Chicago Convention, which governs the use of airspace, in a complaint to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), UAE General Civil Aviation Authority Director-General Saif Mohammed Al-Suwaidi told Reuters. Al-Suwaidi said two Qatari warplanes twice flew dangerously close to the UAE airliners as they descended toward Bahrain International Airport in separate incidents on Monday, and could be seen by the pilots and passengers.“It’s a very obvious violation,” he said by phone. Al-Suwaidi said the UAE aircraft had been intercepted in airspace managed by Bahrain. He refused to say whether their flight paths had taken them across Qatar, the most common route from the UAE to Bahrain. Al-Suwaidi said he was confident that ICAO could stop Qatar from repeating Monday’s incidents but that the UAE could consider to rerouting its flights as a precautionary step. Changing flight paths can be costly for airlines if it means flying longer routes and subsequently using more fuel, often their biggest single operating expense.