As we have reported recently there are a number of European airlines who have restarted flights to Northeast Asia.
In all cases they avoid Russian airspace, and a number of readers have asked us about their routings.
But these carriers are reluctant to divulge many details presumably for political and/or commercial reasons.
So these pieces were compiled from various sources.
- KLM joins Air France in serving Northeast Asia via Kazakhstan
- Finnair to serve Shanghai and Seoul avoiding Russia
A few days ago enthusiasts’ website Flightradar24 revealed more information.
For some airlines, avoiding Russian airspace takes slightly longer. For some, it's a completely new routing. Here's how airlines are going around Russia. https://t.co/DYi1FuDEPh pic.twitter.com/753c0SSktt
— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) March 11, 2022
Last week I asked Lufthansa Group for comment but received no response.
However as you can see from Flightradar24 both Lufthansa itself and Swiss have restarted flights to Northeast Asia.
Lufthansa’s flight operated from Munich to Tokyo Haneda while Swiss operated from Zurich to Hong Kong.
In both cases they took the southerly route over Kazakhstan.
As for Finnair the diagram shows its flight taking the northerly routing adding hours to its previous route over Russia.
What about the two Japanese airlines JAL and ANA?
ANA says its flights to Europe are suspended at least until later this month, but JAL recently restarted its London service with a routing over the Arctic.
Flightradar24 reports that flight JL43 Tokyo-London averaged 12 hours 12 minutes via Russia.
But its new routing over Alaska, Canada, Greenland and Iceland the flight averages 14 hours 38 minutes.
By now you might be asking about our British Airways and Virgin Atlantic.
It is a fluid situation but at time of writing both have suspended passenger flights to Northeast Asia.
It would seem the only carriers flying China-Europe over Russia are the airlines of mainland China.
It is unclear whether the latter are cargo or passenger flights.