Will it be Alaska again for routes East ?
 

To the Cabin
What do my fellow passengers think will be the result of the sanctions that Mr Putin is looking to enforce re over flights. As I am an older long haul passenger I remember the route via Alaska very well and wondered if we will be returning that way given current geopolitics. Will be interested to here your thoughts. The one big change I can think of from back then is that the range of many commercial A/C has increased, so it maybe a fuel and time inconvenience rather than an extra stop.

Without plotting it out (Globe + string :)), I'd guess that only EU - Japan would be seriously affected. May affect loads HKG-LHR - not sure.

I think looking is the operative word there. :cool:

May incur some fuel stops mid-point (somewhere around the middle east) but compared to the costs of tankering 12 hours of fuel to accomplish a direct flight compared to tankering 6 hours of fuel for two (half) flights then tech (fuel) stops kind of pay for themselves ... and at least the punters may get off to stretch their legs whilst the smokers may chain-smoke for the duration of a turnround :)

In the years I worked at Scottish Air Traffic Control Centre (Redbrae and Atlantic house) prior to aircraft routinely routing through SOVIET airspace I only recall Japan Air and Korean being regulars to the north for Alaska then Tokyo/Seoul. I guess the Hong Kong types went south of them.

In 1989 I went to/from HKG with BA via Delhi. The following year it was direct but as Airshow (the moving map) had yet to be invented I have no idea of the routing.

My logbook says we were flying LHR-HKG-LHR via BOM with the B747-200. The B747-200 also flew LHR-HKG-LHR non-stop but with a limited load HKG-LHR. Can't remember if we could do non-stop westbound with winter headwinds.
The B747-400 solved the range/payload restriction and my first B744 LHR-HKG non-stop was 12May1990 in G-BNLB (if any of the others is looking ;))

Aahh :)

Quick back of the envelope/piece of string calculation makes me think a 777-300 could probably manage LHR-HKG routing via Iran but no promises - it's tight if you want to maintain legal reserves and I suspect you'd be losing payload...

Basil

Looking at the logbook I did the LHR-BOM-HKG trip a couple of times in the summer of '90 on the 747-200 ( on one trip I had the added delight of a BOM-DAC shuttle). On the second one I remember running into you senior chaps on the 744 in the pub in HKG since as you say you were doing the non-stop - that cheered up my captain (the brother of a well known footballer;)) no end and put him in a fine mood for the slog back home via BOM........oh how we laughed........

(FWIW I escaped to the 744 about a year later...:ok:)

Never kept a logbook (other than my private pilot's one, and I didn't fly myself far enough to worry about Russia overflight!).

But I flew regularly from '82 - twice a year London or Paris to or from Tokyo, for about eight years and whether with AF or BA we always stopped at Anchorage, always on 747s. (Very nice upstairs bar at Anchorage staffed by happy Korean girls, serving a couple of "nightcaps", before the last leg into London!)

I reckon direct Hong Kong and Tokyo flights would no longer be stop-free if Russia did close its airspace; in the former case the overflight options may become restricted over certain mid-east countries too. There's a lot of dangerous weaponry out there nowadays........

Whether Russia will do it? Don't they earn good money from transit overflight.....?

Eastern wiseguy
I would humbly have to disagree with you as I have many memories of been in PANC with BA,AF,LH,JAL,KOREAN,KLM going to or back from Japan. In fact I may have even seen Iberia but we are talking mid late 80,s and it was a long time ago and as rgsaero says we may have been at the bar (we maybe back there yet) !. They built a new terminal there for this traffic and then Russia opened up, combined with 747-400 and we all started tramping over Siberia and I have not been back there since. Southern routes were all through the Gulf /BKK/HK and it was a long way to get to Japan / Korea so I always went through PANC.


Wiggy / Basil
Some of the 747 100 /200 routes I remember were more like Wells Fargo than an airline back then. I seem to remember stops in Frankfurt, Muscat, Bombay on the way to Singapore once it just seemed to take for ever. I tell myself this when looking at the in flight tracks we now get when that little Red plane seems to be inching its way across Siberia or Africa and you just want to get home !.

Mr Mac...of course you are correct...HOWEVER those which came up from EGLL always went through 61N0804W from Scottish into Reykjavik airspace....I wonder if the Lufty's and Air France clipped the corner between Stavanger and Iceland slightly further east?

Just my recollection...which is subject to a serious error these days :ok: