A Twitter post alleging that Ethiopian Airlines was circumventing Sudanese Airspace as part of an ongoing escalation between Ethiopia and Sudan has been shared hundreds of times on Twitter and Facebook. The post first published by certain Twitter user Mohanad on March 10, 3:32 AM, with screenshot images taken from the flight tracking website FlightRadar24, shows ETH 703 and ETH 705 flying from Addis Ababa to Rome and Paris passing through the Red Sea route, instead of the Sudanese airspace. “Either Sudan has withdrawn Airspace authorization or Ethiopian is pre-emptively re-routing in expectation of a ban,” Mohanad added in the post. The post was quickly seized upon by many with massive followers, including by the so-called Ethiopia expert Kjetil Tronvoll.

But this is false. Ethiopia Check, a fact-checking desk that monitors media and social media reports, debunked the claim, revealing how the above-mentioned flights ETH703 and ETH705 have previously used the Red Sea route rather than the Sudanese airspace, based on the information obtained from the FlightRadar24 application. To this end, the data collected in January, February, and March shows that.

In addition to that, the data from FlightRadar24 shows ET flights continue to enter Sudanese airspace, for example, ETH3417 that crossed through Sudan’s airspace from Addis Ababa to Spain Zaragoza yesterday.

The director-general of the Ethiopian Civil Aviation Authority, Wesenyeleh Hunegnaw, told the Ethiopia check website that “Ethiopian Airlines is still using Sudanese airspace, nothing has changed. The information spreading on Twitter is 100% false.”