Russia’s airspace closure is leading US and European airlines to detour around the country, according to data sent to Insider from travel data provider OAG.
Courtesy of FlightRadar24.com
Russia’s airspace is closed to many global airlines, forcing carriers to detour around the nation.
Routes to and from Asia are up to four hours longer. They’re also more expensive to operate.
Finnair’s flight to Japan is four hours longer, while United treks an extra two hours to India.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has had a significant impact on global airlines. Rising oil prices are taking the biggest toll on passengers, but they’re being affected in other ways, too.
Because Russia’s airspace is closed to some western carriers, it’s forcing global carriers to add hours of extra flight time onto routes to and from Asia, according to data shared with Insider by travel data provider OAG. Some carriers are also avoiding the area for safety’s sake, even though they’re not technically forbidden from Russian airspace.
Carriers like British Airways, Finnair, Dutch carrier KLM, and Lufthansa, are flying about one to three hours longer than normal to avoid Russia.
For instance, British Airways’ New Delhi-to-London route is adding an extra hour, and its flights to Beijing last an extra 90 minutes.
Flights to more distant cities like Seoul, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Beijing, however, are particular long.
British Airways is spending an extra two hours to fly between London and Tokyo this year compared to 2019 — meaning the previous 12-hour journey is now taking up to 14 hours.
Japan Airlines is also making the same long trek, though it is not detouring due to airspace restrictions, but rather safety. The same goes for other non-banned carriers like Korean Air and Japan’s All Nippon Airways.
Meanwhile, Finnair’s journey from Helsinki to Tokyo requires one of the longest detours around Russia, with an average total flight time of 13 hours — four hours longer than its previous nine-hour journey.
JAL’s detour is about the same, with both carriers flying north over the Arctic instead of across Russia — similar to the routing used during the Cold War when most airlines couldn’t fly over the Soviet Union.
Finnair’s route from Helsinki to Tokyo on Monday avoided Russian airspace.
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And although the OAG data didn’t include US carriers, United Airlines actually had to suspend its flights to Mumbai due to the war, and it is currently flying an extra two hours between San Francisco and New Delhi.
Non-sanctioned airlines like those based in China, however, are not affected by Russia’s airspace closure and continue to fly over the nation. According to OAG, their average flight time between Europe and Asia is similar to four years ago.
For example, Shanghai-based Juneyao Airlines is flying the regular nine hours between China and Finland, according to the data. Other carriers like Emirates and Air India are also still operating in Russian skies.
“This is one of those many areas where politics impacts aviation and some airlines benefit, and others take the pain,” OAG analyst John Grant told Insider this week.
While it can be an annoyance for passengers to spend all of that extra time flying, it’s also a costly operation for airlines.
In March 2022, New York-based aviation consultant Robert Mann told ABC News that flying detour routes could cost carriers up to $12,000 extra per hour.
That hefty expenditure comes from the added fuel and labor needed to travel longer distances.
“That of course means an increased fuel burn and longer crew hours, but not just longer crew hours, also heavier crews,” Grant told Insider. “Instead of a three-man crew, the extra hours can tip an airline into a heavy crew of four — and when there is a global pilot shortage, that can be really inconvenient.”
If the war-related setbacks weren’t enough, Grant also said airlines are, in general, behind on their Asian re-expansion post-pandemic.
“European carriers are really not back in the market to Asia in the way they were in 2019, but then again the same can be said for US carriers,” he explained. “It’s a market where aside from some few key cities, frequencies remain to be built and other network priorities are taking their place.”