Lucky Chris. He writes: “I am travelling to Thailand with Thai Airways for an island-hopping trip over Christmas.” I have been lucky enough to spend Christmas in Thailand, and it is a joy in all respects.
However, Chris has a concern: “I have flown to the far east several times before but before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I imagine that the journey will be rather longer than usual given that no flights are now allowed to overfly either Russia or Ukraine. How long will the flights from London Heathrow to Bangkok be this time?”
Longer than I previously enjoyed, that’s for sure. Pilots rarely fly the precise direct track between two airports, due to factors such as wind direction and needing to comply with established air-traffic control corridors. But the “great circle” route is a useful starting point. It is the shortest distance from A to B on the surface of the earth. In the case of Heathrow to Bangkok, it is 5,958 miles.
The Thai capital is well south of London, but the most direct route between Heathrow and Bangkok actually begins by heading slightly north of east. It parallels the Baltic coast of Germany and Poland, then traverses Belarus at its widest point from west to east and starts to cross southern Russia. Seven hundred miles later, the flightpath enters Kazakh skies for a couple of hours, followed by western China.
The opening up of the skies over Russia and China in the late 1980s transformed aviation between the UK and Asia by cutting many hundreds of miles from the existing routes. Together with improved aircraft technology, it allowed nonstop flights such as London-Bangkok for the first time.
Until the Kremlin decided to invade Ukraine earlier this year, such overflights had become routine. Russia extracted large sums in air-navigation charges, which airlines were prepared to pay in order to save fuel and reduce journey times. Quicker trips spell happier passengers and more efficient use of aircraft and crew.
The skies over Ukraine, too, were very busy with east-west overflights – tragically, MH17 was shot down over rebel-held eastern Ukraine in 2014 with the loss of 298 lives while on a routine Amsterdam-Kuala Lumpur flight. Unsurprisingly, when Russia invaded its southern neighbour in February this year, airspace was immediately closed over Ukraine on safety grounds. Russia shut its skies to…
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