Russia fly-around source of tension for airline industry

Russia fly-around source of tension for airline industry

ISTANBUL: With travel between Asia and Europe booming the closure of Russian airspace is hobbling Western airlines while proving a boon for those from non-aligned nations not subject to Moscow’s wrath. For airlines on Russia’s airspace blacklist, avoiding the country which straddles 11 time zones in Europe and Asia is an expensive proposition. Travelling around Russia implies larger distances and longer flight times.

A Paris-Beijing flight path over Russia is some 8,400 kilometers while skirting Russia to the south is 9,800 kilometers, according to data from the Flightradar24 website. That translates into two hours of additional flight time. Between added expenditure on fuel and staff, “this costs much more,” Air France-KLM’s chief executive Benjamin Smith told AFP. “It’s a big issue for us,” he added. And it is an even bigger issue for Finnair as it has based its long-haul strategy on serving as an air bridge between Europe and Asia crossing Russian airspace.

“If you’re Finnair, you had a large number of widebodies that were purchased in anticipation to serve a market, origin and destination pairs between Asia, Europe and North America,” said Vik Krishnan, a partner at the McKinsey consultancy. “Your calculus is quite different than if you’re Lufthansa or