Air Astana BKK - ALA
Can anyone shed light on the reason that the Air Astana flights BKK ==> ALA (KC932 / 939) go so far west at the northern end, and to avoid what?
The north bound flight (ex-BKK) skirts the southern edge of the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush until just north of Kabul.
It then turns north over northern Afghanistan towards Dushanbe / Tashkent before swinging east again towards Bishkek and arriving at Almaty from the west.
The south bound flight does something similar but in reverse.
Possibilities that spring to mind would be :
1) Avoiding Chinese airspace
2) Turbulence over the mountains (though they still go over a heap of them)
3) Lack of alternates over the Tibetan Plateau / Taklimakan Desert
So the question is - in what way is travel over northern Afghanistan better than the above 3 options?