Russian airlines are facing an almost complete blockade from flying west over Europe after they were barred from the airspace of nearly 30 countries following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
On Sunday evening the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said the whole bloc would close its airspace to Russian aircraft.
Hours earlier, Germany, Italy, France, Portugal, Spain, Norway and Finland had joined the long list of states across the continent that have imposed national bans on Russian aircraft flying overhead.
The UK, Ireland, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia, the Czech Republic and the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia had already taken the step to close their airspace to Russian planes, severely limiting Russia’s options for flying west.
Lithuanian airspace usually provides Russia with the shortest flight to its Kaliningrad exclave – a small parcel of land next to the Baltic Sea between Lithuania and Poland – which has no common border with Russia.
The route of flight SU2500, operated by the Russian national airline, Aeroflot, from Moscow to Madrid on Sunday morning illustrated the changes to flight routing already necessary before Sunday’s wave of bans were announced.
The flight tracker website FlightRadar24 showed the Airbus A321 jet flew north-west across Russia to the Baltic Sea, which it crossed to reach Germany’s northern coast, before travelling across Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France and finally Spain.
FlightRadar24 showed that an Aeroflot flight travelling on Sunday from Moscow to Athens took a similar route before dipping south, skirting the coast of Italy before finally reaching the Greek capital. A more much direct journey would have taken an aircraft over Ukraine and the Black Sea.
The airspace closures are redrawing the route map for Russian jets, resulting in longer journeys, which use significantly more fuel and cost more for the airlines to operate, at a time when Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine has pushed oil prices higher. The situation will become far more challenging for Russia now that the EU has closed its airspace, almost completely blocking most flightpaths to the west.
The German flag carrier, Lufthansa, had already cancelled all of its flights to Russia for the coming week.
Russia has banned all British aircraft from landing in the country in retaliation over Boris Johnson’s decision to ban Aeroflot from landing in the UK.
“The immediate impact is on flights between Russia and other countries around Europe, the bigger issue is whether Russian airspace is closed off,” said the aviation consultant John Strickland, of JLS Consulting. “This would have an impact on other countries’ airlines, from the UK and EU states, who would ordinarily use Russian airspace to fly to many destinations in Asia. That means more indirect routings and flying for significantly longer.”
He added: “We don’t know how long this might last for. Airline management teams will be racking their brains right now and thinking about contingency plans.”
The measures come just as international air travel is beginning to return following the pandemic, although there are fewer passenger flights between Europe and Asia, as many countries, such as China and Japan, remain mostly closed to foreign visitors. However, the route changes are also expected to affect the transport of cargo.
Sections of international airspace have been closed off in recent years – including during the Gulf war and when US airspace was shut in the days following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001 – but rarely have so many countries banned another from their airspace.
Parts of Ukrainian airspace were avoided by international airlines from July 2014, after Malaysia Airlines MH17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was shot down, leading to the deaths of all 298 people onboard. International investigators say the Boeing 777 was brought down by a Russian-made missile fired from territory in eastern Ukraine held by pro-Russia rebels, but Moscow has denied involvement.
If Russia decided to shut out international flights from its airspace, the move would have a significant impact on the country’s finances. “Russia makes a lot of foreign exchange for charging for overflight rights, the use of airspace and navigation, and it is a substantial amount,” Strickland said.
