Russian Flight Planning
 

15/01/22

RU675

B747-8

AirBridgeCargo Airlines

A large Russian cargo plane took an lengthy, unexpected and unexplained route over central and southern Finland on Saturday night, passing over Finland's Air Force headquarters and a military intelligence unit.

According to military and security experts interviewed by Yle, the reason for the flight's detour may have been either a protest by Russia or an intelligence-gathering mission as political tensions in the Baltic region continue to escalate.

The cargo plane took off from Moscow at about 7.26pm Finnish time on Saturday evening and flew towards the city of Murmansk in northwestern Russia. However, the flight turned over the White Sea, a southern inlet of the Barents Sea, at roughly the latitude of the city of Oulu and instead flew to the German city of Leipzig.

The plane's route therefore took it over Finland from Suomussalmi in the east to Turku in the southwest, passing Tikkakoski near the city of Jyväskylä, where the Finnish Air Force headquarters and part of the Finnish Defense Forces' intelligence department are located. The cargo plane also passed close to the Halli military airport in Jämsä, Central Finland.

They can see what they want anytime. They did indeed avoid certain airspace.

I would imagine that Finnish ATC and the authorities were fully aware of the aircraft's intended route over Finland. So what are you driving at?

It may well have had something to do with hazardous cargo for which certain countries may not have given them authority to overfly. Furthermore, Finland may have dictated which route they would be authorised to fly through their airspace with such cargo.

And what was the original destination ? Looks like a simple change of destination ,as Leipzig is a major freight hub used by for Volga-Depnr their parent company.. Any new routing has to be approved by Finish ATC and coordinated so it is not up to the crew to decide to overfly this or this city. .

Leipzig, as it is every week. This one just happened to have a 1:30 detour at FL280 over Finland... 😝

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....2e42c56492.jpg

There is a word that the ac was fuelled for a long haul and afterwards was re-scheduled for the leipzig route hence filed a new flight plan with extra length for fuel burn. Go figure. What is the truth we'll probably never know.

Hard to imagine that a 747-8F could be readily configured to provide much intelligence other than a look out the flight deck windows.

Doesn't Putin like to run an irregular flight now and again just to observe what reaction it gets?

Brings back memories of Aeroflot flights into Heathrow prematurely descending before overflying East Anglia at inexplicably low altitudes ...

Perhaps the aircraft has a special 'Holeski' where they put a camera in to record what's what and what's not ? Unlikely, but you never know.

Did that happen often ? If so, what were the consequences of descending to lower altitudes without ATC clearance ?

I remember back in the 70's/80's at Frankfurt, the occurrence of Soviet/Eastern European aircraft requesting landing clearance on the runway next to the USAF base was a weekly thing. Apparently these aircraft DID have cameras/sensors on-board to gather intelligence on the happenings at Rhein-Main AFB. Of particular interest were the matte black C-130's that flew COMINT missions along the Berlin Corridors.

I wonder if PanAm aircraft that flew to the then USSR?China etc had capabilities to gather intel other than the crew seeing things out of the windows ?

ATC Watcher might be along with some stories of what the French got up to during those Berlin Corridor flights. Maybe the Brits and the Americans did the same.

I don't know, but I'd be amazed if there had been any repercussions.

My only contact with Aeroflot at LHR was limited to climbing wobbly steps to put engine blanks in nightstopping Il-62s, and trying out my pidgin Russian on bemused crews. But if the Station Manager was anything to go by, you couldn't get the Russians to do anything they didn't want to do. :O

This is the truth. I have connections in Air Bridge Cargo, and what happened was that the 747 bound to Leipzig went tech, so they put that cargo into the Cincinnati-bound aircraft, which had been refueled already. They had to make a detour to be within landing weight limits on arrival at Leipzig. Simple as that.

Excellent. Now let's put this one to bed please!

The Aeroflot flights inbound to Manchester back when used to route over that well known VRP Fylingdale Moors en route Ottringham-Doggar and vice versa, LOT did likewise perhaps same charts ??

As one who worked at PATCC I can tell you that Aeroflot, like all other operators heading to or from that particular direction, followed established ATC routes. In my time at PATCC we never had any incidents were Aeroflot strayed off track.

Earlier thread on PPRuNe discussing unauthorised Aeroflot low-level excursions over defence bases in the UK and elsewhere: Eastern bloc Cold War ops by civil aircraft

A slight thread drift, but why would Aeroflot or LOT etc need to fly to Manchester back then on a regular basis ? London had Government and the Embassies, perhaps tourists in smaller numbers, but I'm scratching my head about Manchester and environs.

To my knowledge Moscow has always been a top tourist attraction. I recall a teacher friend taking school parties there (and other cities in Russia) several times. Furthermore, have you considered the amount of business traffic that existed/exists between Russia (even in the Soviet Union days) and the UK?