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Comment by dredmorbius | Hacker News Reader

Routing in the 1970s (and until at least 1992) would also likely have been far longer, with most Soviet and Eastern European airspace closed to Western flights.

Whether the lack of non-stop service was on account of routing and range or of lack of sufficient travel demand I don't know.

Current routing appears to traverse Pland, Ukraine, Russia, Georgia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. I could see much of that not being advisable in the 1970s.

<https://www.airportia.com/flight-img/7760680/sq308-sin-lhr-s...>

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Plenty of that isn't advisable now. I flew Frankfurt to Singapore at the end of 2022 and we flew over the south side of the Black Sea to avoid Ukrainian and Russian airspace. We also avoided Afghanistan and flew over Iran instead which slightly surprised me.

Looks like London-Singapore flights do the same

https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/sq305#3437e32f

It's less the airlines being cautious (like they finally started being over Ukraine, but not until MH17): Russia has just closed their airspace to most Western airlines (and vice versa).

This leads to sometimes quite extreme differences in travel times between two cities depending on whether a Western or e.g. Chinese airline are conducting the flight (e.g. London-Shanghai), since Chinese airlines can still overfly both Europe and Russia.

Singapore Airlines (who I flew with) wasn't barred from Russian airspace but they have decided to voluntarily avoid it.

Another thing into play are the airspace fees. It’s a substantial income for Russia. It’s possible that some airlines estimate that they are too high, just out of economic factors and not political factors.

https://simpleflying.com/russia-overflight-charge-hike/

They skyrocketed (pun intended) by 20% just in 2023, amount to $1.7bn and are justified by the radar and route operators, and by the …security provided by the Russian army.

After downing the MH317, many airlines avoided the Ukrainian airspace… in profit of the (unavoidable?) Russian one, further benefiting Russia for this horrible crime. Killing those people may even have provided more revenue to Russia.

Oh yes, a while ago the Chinese airline Air China wanted to fly from New York to Beijing over Russian airspace (the shortest path does involve Russian airspace) but the U.S. government prohibited them from doing that as a matter of fairness. The end result is that the Chinese airline had to operate a domestic flight from New York to Los Angeles in order to fly to Beijing. https://viewfromthewing.com/air-china-has-filed-to-fly-new-y...

> The end result is that the Chinese airline had to operate a domestic flight from New York to Los Angeles in order to fly to Beijing.

This isn't unheard-of. Qantas does (or used to) do this as well, running SYD-LAX-JFK, for efficiency reasons.

Cabotage laws prohibit 081/CCA from carrying any passengers on the domestic leg of that route except the ones that are booked on the international leg of the journey as well. So it's not like you can just book a flight with them domestically.

This concept is called "freedoms of the air" in case anyone is curious about learning more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedoms_of_the_air

    It's less the airlines being cautious
    (like they finally started being 
    over Ukraine, but not until MH17)

You are misrecalling the chronology. Some airlines such as British Airways were avoiding that airspace before MH17 was shot down, it was making the news beforehand. Other airlines such as Malaysia Airlines continued rolling the dice on flying in an active warzone.

What changed after MH17 was that avoiding it was mandated by the relevant authorities.

That's just marketing image some graphic designer made.

For the actual current route, check the flight tracking services like this: https://planefinder.net/data/flight/SQ305/history/4-48720917

So, it's UK->Belgium->Germany->Czechia->Austria->Hungary->Romania->Bulgaria->Turkey->Iran->Pakistan->India->Malaysia->Singapore

That's clearly not the actual route aircraft are taking since it flies directly over the warzone in eastern Ukraine.

"Appears" is doing some heavy lifting in my comment, and was there for a reason.

If you know of a more representational route I'd appreciate your sharing it. My previous link was based on a search for London-Singapore air routes.

Hrm ... I suppose FlightAware or FlightRadar24 might show this, and yes, it does.

BA21 seems to fly over Russia per FlightAware:

<https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/BAW21>

SIA308 flies a more southerly route, crossing the Black Sea and Turkey rather than overlying Ukraine, and conspicuously avoiding Afghan airspace:

<https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/SIA308>

> BA21 seems to fly over Russia per FlightAware:

"ARRIVED OVER 11 YEARS AGO"

Good call, I was relying on a search for flights and didn't check to see if that was current.

BA11 seems to be among British Airways current LHR->SIN offerings. Here's yesterday's flight path, which largely resembles Singapore Airways. Flight time 13h15m.

<https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/BAW11/history/202403...>

> Current routing appears to traverse Pland, Ukraine, Russia, Georgia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. I could see much of that not being advisable in the 1970s.

When I flew from Helsinki, Finland to Hong Kong this summer, the plane avoided flying through Russian airspace, so not sure it's much better now than in the 70s, for some routes at least.

"Avoiding Russian airspace: From a shortcut to a detour" - https://www.finnair.com/en/bluewings/world-of-finnair/avoidi...

> On Monday 28 February 2022 Russia closed its airspace as a countermeasure to EU airspace closure. This meant many changes to Finnair’s Asian services, as most of Finnair’s flights between Europe and Asia have used the shortest, fastest, and most environmentally sound route over Russia.

Given russias current trajectory with their war of genocide against Ukraine[0], it is not foreseeable that any western commercial airlines would be able to fly in their airspace for years to come[1].

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_in_the_Russian_inva... [1]https://www.npr.org/2023/03/18/1162659715/russian-53rd-anti-...

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