While you all discuss whether or not it is risky for Qantas to fly its aircraft through Russian airspace at this point in time, Qantas have now conducted a security analysis and decided it is not prudent.
My point was that it took them 4 days to make this decision, and even made a recent announcement that they were continuing to fly in the airspace - which they have just backflipped on.
Qantas historically has been very conservative in avoiding conflict zones (WWII excluded). For example, when MH17 was shot down, from memory, QF had already ceased flight planning through that airspace.
So this recent decision to continue flying in Russian airspace was interesting to me. Especially considering the alternate flight path south of Ukraine appears to be not too many more track miles, and indeed less track miles than the original PER-LHR route. So the original decision to continue flying over Russia was based on a drop-in-the-ocean fuel impost.
The Townsville refueller was predicting back in December that Putin was going to go all-out on Ukraine. This was hardly unexpected. And no, Putin wouldn’t waste an S-500 on a QF B787, but if there happened to be a high ranking Australian official on board when they had to make an emergency landing? Well, we all know what happened in Belarus. Some situations are best avoided.