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Comment by jonasenordin | Hacker News Reader

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.

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The usual route from Moscow and St. Petersburg to the Eastern seaboard is over Norway and Greenland, but since the EU airspace is closed to Russian flights, the routes to e.g Cancun, Punta Cana, Porlamar, etc. have to take a detour over Kola Peninsula and the fly over the Atlantic parallel to the North American coast. The detour adds maybe 30 minutes to the flight time.

The reciprocal closure of Russian airspace over Siberia to European and US airlines has a bigger impact on cross-continental flights. The London-Tokyo has been trending in the news, since it's now 3 hours longer and has to go over Alaska, [but I think the bigger impact is on nonstop flights like Washington, DC - New Delhi. These must be completely non-viable now for US carriers.]

edit: Chicago - Delhi was not actually routed over Siberia and is only 1.5 hours longer now: https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/ua898

Siberia?

https://www.greatcirclemap.com/?routes=LED-IAD - doesn't looks like it was because of the great circle route.

Most aircrafts traveling west from Asia or Eurasia on a direct flight take a polar route to get to North America. If not over the north pole, at least as close to artic circle as possible.

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