The U.S. Department of Transportation has fined Air France and KLM for flying Delta codeshare routes through restricted airspace over Iraq. The reports say the airlines made more than a hundred such transits and that U.S. regulators assessed penalties because the situation recurred over multiple years.
The airlines dispute the responsibility, saying their pilots were following instructions from air traffic control and were operating flights under Delta marketing codes. Coverage notes that regulators expected the carriers to address the issue either by rerouting around the restricted area or by removing the Delta code from the flights so the U.S. rules would not apply in the same way.
Across outlets, the main context is the compliance requirement for foreign carriers when they operate flights using a U.S. airline’s marketing code. The emphasis differs on cause versus responsibility: some pieces highlight pilot instructions and operational explanations, while others focus more directly on the regulatory rule that codeshare flights must meet U.S. restrictions.
