Air France says flight makes unscheduled landing in Germany

Air France said one of its flights made an unscheduled stop in Germany Wednesday after having to change its planned route due to a partial closure of Kazakh airspace.

The A380 from Shanghai bound for Paris landed at the main airport in the northern German city of Hamburg, said a spokesman for the airline Air France-KLM.

He said the unscheduled landing was a precautionary measure to prevent the aircraft from running out of fuel.

Airspace between Kazakhstan and Kyrgystan on the route was temporarily closed for the launch of a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

The flight landed in Paris with a delay of more than three hours, the spokesman added.

"Hamburg was a good option because it is an airport the right size to accommodate an A380," he said.

He was unable to say whether other airlines' flights also had to re-route due to the Soyuz launch.