Try booking, say, a flight from a major European city to
Beijing or Tokyo. It’s a struggle to even find one — because Russia has closed
its airspace to Western airlines. A few airlines keep flying, but their flights
are now hours longer. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the mutual ban of
airspace by Russia and Western countries, are wreaking havoc on aviation. It’s
emblematic of the state of globalization that the Europe-Asia route, its
foremost commute, is now in tatters.

After nearly two years of chaos caused by COVID, the global aviation business was beginning to recover. Then some 190,000 Russian soldiers marched up to the Ukrainian border. Airlines that usually fly through Ukrainian airspace swiftly decided that it was no longer safe to do so. But that was just the beginning. When Russia then invaded Ukraine, the EU, the UK, and the United States responded by banning Russian-owned, Russian-registered, or Russian-controlled aircraft from their airspace. Russia then banned Western aircraft from its airspace — a much more powerful weapon, since flights between Europe and Asia travel through Russia’s vast airspace. (During the Cold War, Soviet air space was closed to Western airlines, which forced them to make stopovers in Alaska.)

Now Western airlines are having to make a massive flight overhaul. Alaska’s international airport is too small for the number of stopovers that would be needed, and travelers would at any rate dislike having stopovers where they’re used to none. Europe-Asia flights can take an alternative route — but doing so requires bringing a lot more (now increasingly expensive) fuel, and means less cargo space. It also requires adding crew members, not to mention about three hours of flying time. Finnair’s flagship flight between Helsinki and Tokyo, for example, now spends 13 hours in the air, up from 9.5 hours before the invasion, and involves traversing the skies of the Baltic states, Central Europe, Central Asia, China, and Korea; or alternatively, Norway, Svalbard, and the North Pole towards Alaska and the Bering Sea. Lufthansa flights between Europe and Asia now spend a hefty 15 hours in the air, and Air France, too, has developed long detours to be able to keep flying.

The added flying time, fuel, and crew members are not the only
headache that comes with having to circumvent Russian airspace. The adjusted
arrival times mean aircraft can’t easily turn around for the return flight and
may have to spend a whole day at the airport, which brings parking fees and more
disruption to the schedule.

In a stroke of misery, Ukraine COVID had already prompted some
major carriers, including British Airways, to suspend most of their passenger
flights between Europe and Asia, which meant that Russia’s overflight ban
didn’t result in the enormous chaos it otherwise would have. Now these airlines
have to weigh the benefits of trying to revive their crucial Europe-Asia routes
against the pain of much longer and much more cumbersome flights. “When COVID restrictions to Japan and
China loosen in the future, there will be questions over the commercial
viability of these destinations,” a senior airline executive told me. “Other
carriers are likely to be better placed to service these destinations, either
because they continue to use Russian airspace or because they do not need to
route over Russia.” Air China and other Chinese airlines are still allowed in
Russian airspace and can thus gain market share from European competitors. And Emirates
Airlines reaches both Europe and Asia from its hub in Dubai.

When will the Europe-China aviation commute return to its former glory? That depends on the progress of the war in Ukraine. One could, of course, argue that flight reductions are not just beneficial but absolutely crucial if the world is to have a chance to combat climate change. But the Europe-Asia aviation commute, powered by a multitude of airlines, had come to symbolize globalization. Now its seeming demise may come to symbolize a globalization that’s battling geopolitics — and is beginning to lose.

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