Of Ukraine, Russia and QF9
 

With the Russkies fart-arsing about in the Ukraine again, the UK CAA looks to have banned any Russian-affiliate aircraft from their skies, whether it is owned, registered or otherwise associated with, their Federation.

Which makes me wonder how long it may be until Russia retaliates against the west and closes their airspace to any nation that has done it to them?

Where does that leave the Leprechaun's flagship Darwin-London routing, given as things stand it spends about 40% of their time over Russian soil?

I’m going to guess the speeding up of the PER-LHR route again.

These days it looks as if going past Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran will be the “safe” route.....

Understatement of the year so far….
It is a brutal reality that VP has jumped completely over the line. (Of sanity)

My thoughts are with the Ukraine citizens and the Russian citizens that are completely against this action.

Qantas will be fine.

The Russians need the money from overflight charges.

No change expected

Flown over Afghanistan when the Yanks were still bombing

The problem here is the Western Australian policy on matters relating to the virus. They have a very restrictive hard border policy at present, and it's been very difficult for other Australians to get into WA - much less overseas people. Whilst I'm not sure, I think this is the reason why QF9 and QF1 are exiting and entering Australia via YPDN/Darwin at present.

https://www.wa.gov.au/government/cov...ational-travel

Likewise Iraq, including the last northbound QF DXB-LHR flight over Iraq. As we were about to leave Iraqi airspace a huge ISIL instigated explosion near Mosul lit up the night sky; a reminder to us why Qantas was about to switch to operating over Iran rather than Iraq. Days before this overflights of Iran were out of the question due to sanctions.:rolleyes:

BA no longer routing via Russian airspace & Russia reportedly just followed up by banning UK aircraft.
https://www.reuters.com/business/aer...ys-2022-02-25/

So how will BA reroute flights to Tokoyo and Hong Kong? Surely not via Anchorage like the old days. Mind you I loved the time there back on 747-100's

UK aircraft banned from over flying Russia

No doubt it will be profit before safety for most operators. ☹️

I think you'll find that BA not currently flying those routes, however SIN (& SYD from end March) will have to route south.

I wonder how many DRW/LHR pax have the faintest idea of routing?

Probably only once the moving map starts flying over funnily spelt place names in a very northern part of the world :E

The Australian Prime Minister just criticised Vladimir Putin and announced heavy sanctions against Russia, and wealthy Russians connected to the Russian Government.

Qantas just announced that they would continue to fly QF9 over Russia.

What could possibly go wrong?

Will be a looong flight without a stop at ANC, some aircraft may not have the range.

Difficult to tell, Russian Federation makes a lot of money charging for overflight rights, on the other hand, it will make a fortune selling oil and gas to China....

Probably be OK once Western Australia opens its domestic border, great circle route goes just south of Ukraine (Black Sea).

I think the plan to fly QF9 over russia will be just that,A PLAN.

Well, not for the QF1 and QF9 currently in Russian airspace! But…for how much longer?

Why avoid Russian airspace? Avoid the area around the Ukraine by all means, as per FAA Notams etc but the greater part of the Russian FIR is as “safe” as it has been.
Putin has no interest in picking a fight with any other nations by endangering their aircraft. The risk is around Ukraine only.

Sanctions and overflight fees revenue when many western countries are trying to minimise any source of finance to the Russian regime.

IT isn't about the risk of being attacked I was thinking, that the economic cost, ie if EASA bans Russian overflights, etc, then, well, Russian airspace is a major thoroughfare for a lot of Asia-Europe type flights, even QF9 now out of Darwin spends a significant portion over Russian territory. Would Russia in turn close their airspace to everyone who has locked Aeroflot out, thus forcing QF and others into a long-winded route via the Middle East or SE Asia with additional fuel, landing fees etc?

As an example, right now over Russia there's:
AI186 from Vancouver to Delhi
AI174 San Fran - Delhi
ANA224 Frankfurt-Haneda
ANA212 London-Haneda
JAL44 London-Tokyo
KAL082 Chicago - Shanghai
KAL038 Chicago - Seoul
KAL094 Washington - Seoul
And another couple dozen more, not to mention QF9 or QF1 - who has just left Russian airspace.

One would imagine that everyone closing their airspace to Russian aircraft would have much less impact on world air travel than if Russia were to close their airspace to everyone else.

If that’s the case in 5 days they can operate unrestricted through Perth, the city they want to operate through and the one they’ll eventually be operating through in 3 months anyway, flying over the now safe area of the Middle East and Southern Europe to LHR and FCO, well away from the Ukraine and Russian airspace. The great circle track from Perth only comes close to some parts of the Black Sea, but they can just make a very minor diversion to the south to stay over Turkey, or stay well south and go over Saudi then Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean. Plenty of airlines flying these tracks on FR24 right now.

What happens if there's an emergency over Russia and a 787 from a NATO-member country has to land in, say, Novosibirsk? Would you trust Putin with a couple of hundred stranded hostages?

Quite so - I certainly wouldn't be happy with a such a long routing with non-Russian diversion points. This of course in addition to any moral considerations of adding overflight revenue to the Russian economy.

Almost all EU countries have announced overflight bans today with turn back of LH & KL flights planned to cross Russian airspace.

Yes of course, why would you not. You need to look at his moves in Ukraine a little more closely.

I recon it will be a non-event from the political side of things if an Indian plane needs to divert Pakistan or a western plane into Tehran with a fire.

ICAO rules are very clear.

Sure they are, but remind me why no-one's been flying over Belarus for the last year? ICAO rules didn't stop the Ryanair flight being forced to land & pax abducted in Minsk..

Just published in The Australian:

Like MH17?

Obviously not regularly enough.

Which was a mistake by Russian backed Ukraine separatists, not an executive order from Putin.

Mistakes...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrain...nes_Flight_752

Yeah, of course, Putin had nothing to do with it, just a mistake.

Putin didn't order the deliberate targeting of a Malaysian aircraft flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur for a specific reason. It was reckless use of force in a civilian heavy area. I believe the West calls it "Collateral damage".

As the routing of the flights were well to the north of Moscow I doubt whether there was any risk to the aircraft. But they couldn't be seen paying overflight fees to Putin, and there is an alternative route that will cost them but is doable.

Interestingly at this very moment United Airlines ORD-DEL is over Russia, no real way to avoid it to make direct US to India flights. As well as Finnair, Korean, Japan and Air France and others that are all speaking against Russia in this conflict. It looks as if the PR benefit to not paying Russian overflight fees is weighed against the ability to route your aircraft around it's airspace and still be able to perform direct flights.

Putin is not stupid. What possible motivation is there for him to shoot down a civilian airliner? What does he gain?


The PR benefit? Does that mean the EU will stop buying the Russian gas? No I did not think so. which means...virtue signaling. The new scourge of the western world.
It is partly what got us here, instead of spending time worrying about which comedian is telling unacceptable jokes and what pro noun to use, we should have been anticipating this.
Putin put 30,000 troops on the border nearly a year ago.

Oh, he's definitely not stupid, far from it. But the west is weak, and getting weaker by the day. Whether he 'ordered' the firing of that missile or not, they fired it under his regime. He's not been held to account and won't be. It's doubtful he'll be held to account over this atrocity while the weak west keeps their fingers crossed for sunny and windy days to keep their Teslas charged and fight over legislation to ensure a male born can cane a women in the swimming pool. But Putin it was that brought MH17 down, argue the technicalities but he's PIC.

I am picking up what you are putting down but I think F up not an actual strategic decision.

.

Very well said. Too many people running around worrying about which person to cancel next.

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.

You guys sound like those old people in the 60s/70s saying we shouldn’t listen to rock and roll because of the devil.

How exactly would all the people who are busy running around ‘cancelling’ take a break and prevent Russia invading Ukraine?

Well said. We could of had a nice thread going about airspace limitations and the benefits and limitations of flying particular routes, yet the usual types came in and for absolutely no reason brought up cancel culture, transgendered people, comedians, climate change and whatever issue they are told to have a sook about by their chosen shock jock that has no relevance to their life or this thread.

I’m a bit over the politicisation of every thread here, we saw it on the Covid threads so let’s not bring it in everywhere. There’s a forum called Jet Blast where you can argue about this stuff to your hearts content.

Effective immediately, flight path now changed. LHR flights will now over fly the Middle East and Southern Europe adding around 1 hour to the total flight time.

No he is not stupid. He is, however, IMHO a megalomaniac who does anything that he thinks is right and killing foreigners is one of those things.

One of the NZ papers had a report yesterday that he has lost the support of the Russian Parliament, but that won't stop him.