Routes
SAS has unveiled a new route from Aalborg to New York, but its CEO admitted it would fly to fewer Asian destinations over the longer term.
Slotting in? 11%
The portion of the earth’s landmass that Russia accounts for – with associated flight bans hitting Western airlines hard.
BBC Science Focus 22
How have airlines caught up in the Ukraine emergency dealt with it? In the first instance, they’ve simply grimaced and secured alternative routes no matter the immediate costs. An upcoming Finnair flight from Helsinki to Singapore, for example, is scheduled to last 12 hours and 35 minutes, compared to less than 12 hours in 2019. In a broader sense, operators have also battled to reconfigure their roster to avoid Russian airspace. In Finnair’s case, that’s unsurprisingly meant looking west rather than east, with Dallas-Fort Worth and Seattle providing two new destinations in the New World, whereas a fresh non-stop flight to Mumbai avoids Russian airspace to the south. Other airlines have adopted a similar posture. SAS, the shared flag carrier of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, unveiled a new route from Aalborg to New York – even as the airline’s CEO admitted that his firm would fly to fewer Asian destinations over the longer term. All the same, these varied tactics don’t really resolve another downside of Russia: slots. Doled out by airport operators, and allowing airlines to arrive or depart at certain times, they’re an incredibly precious commodity across international aviation. That’s particularly apparent in the busiest global hubs. In 2016, to give one example, Oman Air snatched up a prized Heathrow early morning slot from Air France-KLM for $75m. The problem, however, is that airlines buy their slots far in advance, predicated on when they expect flights to arrive. The crisis in Ukraine has plainly upended these calculations – but sheer demand means, as Grant puts it, that “slots might not be available” for flights that arrive later than planned. A partial solution, Gradek notes, is to simply take off earlier, but that risks upsetting connections. A British Airways flight from Heathrow to Tokyo would ideally leave at a time that
can accommodate passengers connecting from other European capitals. But needing to meet the Tokyo slot potentially means leaving them behind.
A land for all seasons?
Quite apart from the frustrations caused to passengers here, airlines are materially impacted by all this confusion. In the UK, each instance of ‘slot misuse’ risks costing a carrier £20,000 – while airports reserve the right to remove slots entirely if airlines don’t use them a certain number of times each trading round, known in the industry as a season. As with routing more generally, meanwhile, Asian and Middle Eastern airlines are at an advantage here. Unlike during the pandemic – which impacted every carrier more or less evenly, and which saw strict rules temporarily loosened – airlines not impacted by the Ukraine war have little incentive to be so flexible these days. “There was a rollover of slots,” says Gradek of seasons immediately after the pandemic struck. “But that was under very extraordinary circumstances.” At the same time, and as the sudden violence in the Middle East vividly demonstrates, these challenges are hardly going to disappear – if and when the killing in Ukraine finally ends. To explain what he means, Grant brings up Niger, a West African country that temporarily closed its airspace following a coup. As the analyst freely concedes, Niger is “not very big” in geopolitical terms, but is nonetheless crucial for a number of routes between Europe and Africa. The same could be said of Algeria, which following a spat with neighbouring Morocco, now obliges Royal Air Maroc to avoid Algerian airspace in flights to Cairo and the Levant. The point, stresses Grant, is that flexibility is vital – both now and in the future. Considering the upheavals Flightradar24 has showcased over recent years, the point feels fair. ●
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