Russia's invasion of Ukraine has resulted in moves and counter-moves by European governments and airlines that are causing chaos in air service throughout the region:
- Airspace over Ukraine has been closed since early Thursday morning, and now airspace above Moldova, parts of Belarus, and that part of southern Russia nearest Ukraine is also closed.
- The UK, Poland and the Czech Republic have each banned aircraft of Russian airlines from their airspace.
- In retaliation against the UK, Russia has banned aircraft of UK airlines from its airspace, and British Airways and other British airlines are now routing their flights around Russia.
- Delta Airlines has suspended codesharing with Aeroflot.
- American Airlines has rerouted flights between NYC and Delhi which normally would traverse now-closed airspace.
- Japan Airlines has begun canceling flights to Moscow.
- Novosibirsk-based S7 Airlines (aka JSC Siberia Airlines) has suspended all flights to Europe until at least 13 March.
- Both the Biden Administration and the European Commission have said they intend to shut down the export of aircraft parts to Russia - a move that's sure to reduce the supply of airworthy Russian aircraft sooner rather than later. (Aeroflot currently has in service 120 Airbus aircraft, and 59 manufactured by Boeing, but only 10 made domestically by Sukhoi.)
And to aggravate an already bad time for airlines, with the Ukraine conflict on top of decreased travel demand due to COVID-19, the threat of Russian oil exports being throttled has sent oil prices above $105/barrel for the first time since 2014.
What next? Stay tuned.
