> No U.S airlines currently fly into any Russian cities, and those that flew over Russia's vast airspace to Asia had already been rerouting out of an abundance of caution. That adds time and burns a lot more fuel, increasing costs.<p>Yes and no. If you add a refueling stop to a long-haul flight, it can save enough fuel to make up for the rerouting. (Long-haul flying is really inefficient because you have to take-off/carry <i>all</i> the fuel needed to make it to your destination).<p>e.g. a flight from NYC-Paris-Delhi is only 5.5% longer distance than direct, even though it now routes over europe instead of a direct polar route over Russia<p><a href="http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=nyc-del,+nyc-cdg-del" rel="nofollow">http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=nyc-del,+nyc-cdg-del</a><p>(This isn't perfect, it still shows a bit of routing over Russia, but you get the idea). And you still have staffing costs, landing costs, etc. Weather related routings, night-time landing restrictions, etc.
This is a Russian government Ilyushin currently en route from St. Petersburg to Washington. As the United States has a Russia flight ban, assumptions are that the airplane has special authorization.<p>Last three flights of this airplane:<p>04 Mar 2022 Moscow (VKO) - St. Petersburg (LED)<p>03 Mar 2022 Brest (Belarus)(BQT) - Moscow (VKO)<p>02 Mar 2022 Moscow (VKO) - Brest (Belarus) (BQT)
This is what this is all about:<p><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/28/us-expelling-russian-diplomats-from-un-mission-in-new-york" rel="nofollow">https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/28/us-expelling-russia...</a><p>Interesting that even with the special authorization the plane was not given permission to transit EU airspace.
Lost on the news cycle but rich in the subtle language of diplomacy was that notice of the expulsion was delivered while the Russian senior diplomat was conducting a press conference.
<a href="https://youtu.be/yLaX-035hOo?t=161" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/yLaX-035hOo?t=161</a>
We can still see:<p>* a private jet flying from Munich(UPEM008) to Moscow<p>* a commercial flight leaving Moscow to Berlin (Bulgarian Air LZBRU)<p>* a private jet flying over Lithuania from Moscow (4XCUZ)<p>and<p>* a RAF aircraft (RRR7240) patrolling over Poland close to the Ukrainian border<p>* An Istanbul to Minsk flight (Belavia 2784) flying east over Georgia, then far east from Volgograd then west to Minsk
The live tracker: <a href="https://www.flightradar24.com/RSD088/2b07dd1e" rel="nofollow">https://www.flightradar24.com/RSD088/2b07dd1e</a>
It seems that the plane had to go all the way around the closed airspaces of Finland and Norway (well, Scandinavia) to reach the Atlantic. Or maybe it's the projection.