TIL: Most countries charge airlines overflight fees which can vary by mile, size/weight of aircraft, etc. These can add up to be significant with the alternative being to fly around that airspace at the cost of increased fuel, passenger time, staffing, equipment mileage, etc. Russia's overflight fees are at the high-end of the scale.<p>An explanation with nice visual examples: <a href="https://multimedia.scmp.com/news/world/article/2165980/flight-paths/index.html" rel="nofollow">https://multimedia.scmp.com/news/world/article/2165980/fligh...</a><p>It looks like such a change would increase some impacted flight times by more than an hour. Since legislatively preventing this foreign income to Russia would result in substantially increased costs and inconvenience to consumers, why not instead of a ban, introduce a limit in fees paid to Russia at no more than the average of all other countries fees? Russia still might refuse overflight instead of accepting the reduced payments but if they don't it would substantially cut Russia's income, while reducing costs for consumers and airlines. This kind of price limiting would be similar to the way some transactions for much-needed Russian oil are being handled to mitigate damage.