Closure of Russian airspace lead to seek alternative routes

Wednesday, March 23, 2022

The closure of Russian airspace due to escalation of Russia-Ukraine Conflict,  to some international airline carriers, including many in Europe, has forced airlines to seek alternate routes. For some flights, such as those linking Europe and Southeast Asia, that’s especially problematic since Russia, the world’s largest country stands directly in between.

The problem is best illustrated by Finnair’s flight from Helsinki to Tokyo. Before the invasion of Ukraine, planes from Finland’s national carrier would take off and quickly veer into the airspace of neighboring Russia, crossing it for over 3,000 miles.

They would then enter China near its northern border with Mongolia, fly in its airspace for about 1,000 miles, before entering Russia again just north of Vladivostok.

Finally, these flights cross the Sea of Japan and turn south towards Narita Airport. The journey would take just under nine hours on average and cover nearly 5,000 miles.

The last such flight departed on February 26. The next day, Russia barred Finland from using its airspace, forcing the temporary cancellation of most of Finnair’s Asian destinations, including South Korea, Singapore and Thailand.

Riku Kohvakka, manager of flight planning at Finnair said that by that point, however, the airline’s route planners had long been at work to find a solution. They had made the first very rough calculation about two weeks before the actual closure of the airspace

The solution was to fly over the North Pole. Instead of heading southeast into Russia, planes would now depart Helsinki and go straight north, heading for the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, before crossing over the pole and Alaska.

Then they would veer towards Japan flying over the Pacific, carefully skirting Russian airspace. That’s not as straightforward as before: The journey now takes over 13 hours, covers approximately 8,000 miles, and uses 40% more fuel.

Finnair started flying via the polar route to Japan on March 9. So, how does an airline completely redesign one of its longest flights in just over a week?

The next step is a new operational flight plan, which tells the crew what the planned route is, how much fuel they need, how much the plane can weigh and so on. From experience, we knew we had two possibilities: one via the north, and one via the south,” says Kohvakka.

In addition to the polar route, Finnair can also reach Japan by flying south of Russia — over the Baltics, Poland, Slovak Republic, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan to China, Korea and then to Japan. It’s longer, but if wind conditions are particularly favorable it can be used, resulting in a similar flight time. Then, fuel consumption data, together with navigational fees, is used to estimate the cost for the flight.

Airlines routinely deal with closure of airspace, for example during spacecraft launches and military drills, and prior conflicts have curtailed or halted flight over Afghanistan, Syria, and Pakistan. A closure of this magnitude, however, has not occurred since Cold War times.

Because over flight rights are negotiated between nations rather than individual airlines, Russia and Finland secured an agreement only in 1994, two years after the Soviet Union disintegrated.

Previously, Finnair, like most other European airlines, did not fly over the Soviet Union at all. When it began operations to Tokyo in 1983, it also flew across the North Pole and Alaska.

The new route increases fuel consumption by a whopping 20 tons, making the flights environmentally and financially challenging. For that reason Finnair is prioritizing cargo, where demand is stronger, and limiting passenger capacity to just 50 seats (the Airbus A350-900s used on the flights could carry up to 330 people).

« Back to Page

• BARK Air revolutionizes pet air travel globally

• LEVEL launches Barcelona-Miami service at MIA with Vibrant Art Installation

• Turkish Airlines launches direct flights from Denver to Istanbul

• Groundbreaking Results: Ljubljana Jože Pučnik Airport Cuts Turnaround Delays by Six Minutes with New Tech

• New Zealand flavours soar high with the airline menu!