Today two KLM aircraft with destination Russia returned with unknown reason.
Official statement from KLM was the unclear support with spare parts at destination.
Later a Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt to Tokyo also returned back to Frankfurt before entering the russian airspace. Reason not yet given:
Two more need to return. One Lufthansa, one DHL:
It’s not a ban from Russia.
Lufthansa made the decision to avoid russian airspace due to unclear situation:
Germany closes it’s airspace for all russian aircraft starting today at 3pm and is following the other countries which did it already
It’s just been announced that no Russian aircraft will be allowed in any EU airspace.
Including Canada meanwhile. The map is getting bigger and makes it more difficult for them
I wish I had grabbed a screenshot, but last night I was tracking a JAL flight from NRT to DFW, and it basically headed straight east from Japan - no great circle route. I have to wonder how much that will add in terms of time and fuel cost - not to mention ETOPS planning…
edit: found it on FR24 website:
SU111 from Miami to Moscow is about to enter Canadian airspace (23:00 UTC). I assume that it has special dispensation to cross or the reports about Canada banning Russian carriers aren’t quite true.
It is likely that the market for air transportation to Asia will be dominated by Asian, Qatar and Turkish airlines.
And suddenly USA
Canadian government is already aware about it and is investigating.
Greenland is on the “no-go” map, however there are still aircraft flying across:
Question will be how long they will do it. US already requested their cititzens to leave Russia
Wow, everybody posting map from Flightradar24. Are no such maps available from Flightaware? Afterall this is Flightaware forum.
Flightradar has the best coverage, especially in MLAT.
I prefer the adsbexchange interface because of the interface’s capabilities.
India:
Canada:
Montreal, Canada
VIDP / DEL New Delhi, India
China
CYYZ Toronto, Canada
ZSPD / PVG Shanghai, China
There is a map. But you know that it’s less comfortable:
We are also discussing lots of stuff regarding other sites. This should then be stopped as well according to your request.
Maybe one of the reasons why people preferFR24 map.
This flight is estimated by Flightaware across Ukraine:
But it’s not:
Russia blocked their airspace now for aircraft of 35 different countries
List of countries for whose aircraft the Russian sky is closed
Did the route rules change for more aircraft models this year? I noticed a few aircraft doing that more direct east-west crossing on Feb 15 (before the Ukraine situation escalated). (2nd image below is all day HFDL tracking).
This week at any given time, there are multiple aircraft doing the direct Pacific crossing. The first image below is right now, B787s, A350s, A330s. ICN-SFO, TPE-LAX, China Airlines route unknown, China Eastern. (I don’t think China is too worried about anything, so I’m not sure this is about keeping distance from eastern Russia). Seems like more airlines are opting to use this route because they can.
Today, 3-hour timeout
Feb-15 24-hour tracking
Another Aeroflot flight to Verona was holding position over Turkey, finally diverted to Istanbul.
Flight had an unusual flight number for Aeroflot.
Screenshot Flightaware map (@abcd567 
)
Maybe it’s just a coincidental jet stream thing then? I compared the reported actual flight distance (6,700 miles) to the great circle mapper at 6,400 miles.
An extra 300 miles probably isn’t the end of the world, but it is an extra 45 minutes or so of flight time and more than 1,000 gallons of extra fuel burn.
Doesn’t seem like they would do it on purpose without a compelling reason.
Edit: I bet that’s it. I just found a map of the jet stream, and there are currently winds blowing straight east off of Japan at 150mph+. FR24 says that the average time for that flight is 10 hours 55 minutes. This flight did it 2 minutes faster, at 10:53, despite going 300 miles further.
Looking at the same flight on FlightAware, they have the flight at 6902 miles, which is 500 extra miles. If they did that in ~11 hours, they were rocking along at >625mph as an average ground speed.
I’m thinking jet stream.
