NATO opens Kosovo airspace to civilian overflights after 15 years

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - NATO said on Friday it had allowed private planes to fly high over Kosovo for the first time in 15 years, letting commercial airlines save time and money by taking more direct routes across the region.

There are regular civilian flights to Pristina, Kosovo's capital, but private airliners have been barred from using the so-called "upper" airspace since NATO took over responsibility for policing it at the end of the Kosovo war in 1999.