As Aeroflot gets quite a bit of the Siberia overflight fees it wouldn't exactly help promote their financial well being if they close that airspace.

I suspect Aeroflotski would STFU?

Looking at Google Earth, about the only nonstop routes that would be affected by closing airspace over Siberia are flights from EU to Japan, South Korea, and Beijing/Shanghai, and flights from the East Coast of the US to most of Asia except Japan. (Japan is sufficiently far to the east that the great circle route JFK-NRT barely scrapes the edge of Russian airspace.) There's only a handful of the latter (New York / Newark to Hong Kong, Delhi, maybe one or two others).

In effect, such a closure would not hurt the EU as much as it would hurt East Asian countries (Japan, South Korea, China/Hong Kong). Japan has some limited sanctions against Russia, but South Korea is neutral and China is generally considered friendly.

Come on - the price of oil is directly related to sudden changes in the posture of major oil suppliers. Middle eastern capacity may or may not be near limits, but with China now buying a lot of oil from Iraq and Saudi more or less acknowledging it's running near capacity (someone correct me if I am wrong here) big scares have rapid results in pushing oil prices up. Russia won't be bankrupt in a hurry, and countries cannot afford to stop buying energy its various forms in any hurry either.

It's becoming a very difficult situation.

well they have banned Ukrainians...

funniest thing is that today Russia banned to fly to Turkey for ukrainian airlines through their territory. but we never did)

Well if UK can close it's airspace, under the guise of NATS withdrawing it's services, due to a volcano in Iceland, along with multiple other countries then the Russian Federation might close it's airspace also under one or more guises.

Of course, as other(s) have pointed out, many a Europe-Asia-Europe wide-body routes over Russia providing a valuable income to the Russian economy, if they lose that income then life simply becomes more difficult for the good and innocent folk of the Russian Federation.

Sooner or later they may realise that one, just one, person needs to be removed for things to get back to normal!

La Russie durcit les sanctions contre les pays occidentaux
This article from today's Le Figaro clearly states that Medvedev has confirmed Russian airspace sanctions and will affect long haul flights to/from Asia from/ to Europe, including obviously flights from Australia with connections in HK, Singapore etc. Aeroflot will be affected economically, so biting off nose to spite face, but what did anyone expect- you put santions on Russia they are not going to sit there like dummies..
There are food importation sanctions as from today with produce from US, Australia and Europe- except baby products...

Phileas Fogg
I do not think over flight revenues will be that large in comparison with the revenues from Gas and Oil. That would be the gas that powers a lot of Eastern and Western Europe and currently the countries within those areas have little option as the infrastructure is not there for an easy change of supply route, or supplier, and winter that old Russian friend is coming. The gas fires maybe going out all over Europe to paraphrase an old but recently much used quote.

Siberian overflight fees are not paid to the Russian government, they are 'royalties' paid to Aeroflot to compensate for the competitive disadvantage of having to offer one-stop service to the Far East compared to non-stop and are subject to bilateral commercial agreements between Aeroflot and the airlines concerned. The process began when airlines dropped the Moscow stop and started to operate direct.

They bring in a windfall of a bit more than 300 million dollars a year which pretty emphatically makes the difference between profit and loss for Aeroflot.

The Russian authorities of course step back and say 'nothing to do with us - these are commercial agreements freely entered into', but naturally, without such agreement - no overflight rights.

Of course the converse would apply - take away the overflight rights and Aeroflot's cushy revenue stream would dry up.

russian government could subsidise Aeroflot, if they close the airspace for western carriers that would mean the same carriers would have to fly much longer routes and spend much more fuel, I don't know how much oil Europe buys from Russia but if they start buying more oil from them then it would mean more money for Russians so they could subsidise Aeroflot only from that surplus :)

Get real and get with the program, you obviously have no clue.

Tit For Tat.

Russia bans EU airlines overflights - EU bans Russian airlines overflights etc.

Who gains what ?

in reality everyone loses

Losing the overflights
 

Pretty much as it was about 20 years ago, isn't it?
Everybody managed back then.


Not as convenient or economical as overflight but not the end of the world either, for either of the party.


SIA flight to Houston through Moscow? Would that be affected?
CX might have to duck and weave a bit to get to London.
Aussie flights through the middle east? So what's different.


Asian carriers to east coast USA will need to dodge Kamchatka / Sakhalin, same as they did 20 years ago.
If they are affected at all.


Inconvenient and costly, most certainly.


Unmanageable? I don't think so.

Statement by Shadow leader of Australia Bill Shorten;

"Who does this president of Russia think he is"

In light of 38 dead aussies and others on board MH17, he rejects "Russian moral authority" to sanction Australia.

"We'll sell our world class food elsewhere"

With such talk will entry visas to Russia become difficult?

Have spent last week in Russia.

The bulk of the population, and indeed daily extensive television features, are convinced that Malaysian was shot down by an air-air missile fired from a Ukrainian fighter, to embarrass the Russian side and stick it on them when it became known the rebels had stolen the SAMs from the Ukrainian military. As a result they cannot understand the sanctions imposed by the EU/West and consider them some sort of spite for support for Crimea and Eastern Ukraine.

The population in these areas are mainly Russian (in Crimea almost entirely, it was Russian until 1960), a hangover from the breakup of the Soviet Union when there were no relevant divisions as such. Various independent former Soviet countries have taken a series of measures in recent years aimed at sheer nastiness against their Russian-background minority populations, this being good vote-catching territory for the locals (look up "Latvian Stateless persons" for example), and the Russian government has come in for much stick about not supporting them more; they have of course many relatives etc back in Russia, and were just living on the wrong side of a ine when the Soviet breakup happened.

The Russians and the Ukrainians are both just about the largest trading partners with each other, there are considerable links and you still see Ukrainian 737s at all the main Russian airports.

Anyone still remember what happened to Lufthansa Cargo and Krasnoyarsk? European and US carriers could be forced to do a stopover in Russia, while the likes of EK and CX fly non-stop.

You mean we are all gonna have to go through that backwards hole that is Calcutta/Dhaka/Yangon airspace on EVERY Europe bound long haul?

I would rather slice my wrists with a plastic spork. Seriously, I think that would be the straw that finally puts my app in at Starbucks.

:yuk::yuk::yuk:

When the likes of Boeing or maybe even Airbus are prohibited from doing business with Russia is when we will realize that things are getting serious. Until then not much more than hassle for the traveling public and some additional costs which will be passed on to the public.:mad: