In order to fly to certain destinations in Latin America, some Russian airlines are flying previously unseen routes, including stopovers in airports like Agadir International Airport, Morocco. What has been the impact of the Western sanctions on Russian carriers? Let’s investigate further.
Closed airspace
In the last two weeks, the European Union, Canada, the United States, and a few other countries closed their airspaces to airlines and aircraft from Russia. Aeroflot, S7, Azur Air, Nordwind, and other Russian-based airlines have already felt the impact of the prohibition. The ban was one of the many economic sanctions imposed on Russia due to the country’s current invasion of Ukraine.
Banning Russian airlines and aircraft from the European, Canadian, and American airspaces has temporarily led some carriers to ground many international flights. For instance, today, Aeroflot halted all international flights except Minks, Belarus.
Other carriers have maintained a few international flights to countries that have not imposed travel restrictions on Russian airlines, like Mexico and Cuba. But, to keep those flights, they have had to operate longer routes, adding overall flight time, costs, layovers, and more. Let’s see a few examples.
The Russian airlines keeping their international connectivity have had to heavily reroute their flights. Photo: Getty Images.
Traveling through Morocco
Take, for instance, Azur Air’s flight ZF6680 between Moscow’s Vuknovo International Airport and Cancun International Aiport in Mexico. We are using data from FlightRadar24.com for this flight.
In January 2022, Azur operated the flight onboard a Boeing 777, registration VQ-BXJ. It covered 10,023 kilometers, flying nearly 13 hours. It flew over the European Union airspace through countries like Finland, Norway, and Sweden.
Today, Azur Air is flying between Moscow and Cancun, but it is using a very…