Big Diversions

Thursday, 29 May 2025

All the airline routes that follow are from FlightRadar24’s wonderful website.

I commented recently on Ryanair 4978 from Athens, Greece to Vilnius, Lithuania doing a little westward jog approaching or departing Vilnius to avoid crossing Belarus airspace. That’s a result of Ryanair having a bad experience with the Belarusians when they forced a Ryanair flight to divert to Minsk in Belarus in order to hijack a passenger on board.

Over the years I’ve noted many other diversions for political or safety reasons. Nobody wants to fly over Ukraine when there’s the chance that trigger happy Russians might shoot down commercial aircraft – like Malaysian Airlines MH17 on 17 July 2014. Nobody trusts Putin do they?

Periodically Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan have all been off and on as ‘no fly zones’ depending on politics, wars, airline disputes and other reasons. Right now most Western airlines do not fly over Russia, because of Russia’s unprovoked war on Ukraine. Finnair is probably the airline most affected since Finland is right next to Russia. Helsinki, Finland to Singapore is clearly a flight which would proceed straight across Russia, if politics did not intrude. Instead this is the route Finnair takes Helsinki-Singapore. ▼◄ But these expensive and environmentally disastrous diversions with all that extra fuel burnt in order to take a circuitous route applies to both sides. For Russian holidaymakers the Egyptian Red Sea coast is a popular destination, but look at the route you have to fly to get from Moscow to Sharm el Sheikh on the Red Sea since, hardly surprisingly, you cannot fly south from Moscow over Ukraine.

 

 

It’s the same story if you want to fly from Minsk, Belarus to Istanbul, Turkey? Check the amazingly roundabout route Belarus flight B2783 has to take to avoid Ukraine airspace. ▼I might face a slightly longer flight time going from London to Delhi in August. I’m ‘hosting’ a World Expeditions trip to Mustang (AKA Lo Manthang, northern Nepal up against the border to Tibet) so I’ll be flying via Delhi to Kathmandu. Due to the recent scuffle between India and Pakistan my Air India flight might have to avoid Pakistani airspace, adding an hour or an hour and a half to the flight time. ▼◄  Hopefully the arguments will be sorted out before I depart, but many flights to or from Europe or North America operated by Indian airlines which would normally cross Pakistan have to divert. Similarly Indian air space is currently closed to Pakistan airlines. That doesn’t affect as many Pakistani flights although some that are impacted have to make extremely long diversions. Flying Lahore, Pakistan to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia stretches the flight time by three hours, currently Pakistan International Airlines flight takes 8-1/2 hours, Batik Air operates the same route in 5-1/2 hours. Here’s the extremely circuitous PIA route.