Flight Routes Are Being Thrown Into Chaos With Closure of Russian Airspace
The global aviation map looks a lot different since the Ukraine invasion, and airlines are already feeling the pain.
A departures board shows canceled flights at Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow on Feb. 28.
Photographer: Mikhail Metzel/TASS/Alamy
Since before the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia has been an integral part of global aviation. Hundreds of flights used to crisscross its vast land mass on any given day to connect Europe and the U.S. with Asia. PJSC Aeroflot-Russian Airlines, among the oldest carriers in the world, has served about 50 countries with state-of-the-art planes from Airbus SE and Boeing Co. And overflight rights for more than 300,000 jets using Russian airspace each year brought in hundreds of millions of dollars in fees for the government.
But the attack on Ukraine has upended decades of ever-closer alliances in commercial aviation. After the U.K. barred Aeroflot and other Russian carriers from entering its airspace late last month and the European Union introduced sweeping sanctions, Russia retaliated, banning virtually every country in Europe—including historically neutral Switzerland—from its airspace. The U.S. swiftly followed suit, closing its airspace to Russia.