See How Airlines Are Navigating the Dangerous Skies to Avoid Global Conflicts
The Journal analyzed flight paths on some of the world’s busiest routes, which are shifting around conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East
- Global conflicts have disrupted civil aviation, leaving fewer safe flight routes between Europe and Asia.
- Recent Houthi strikes on Saudi Arabian airports upended a route used by airlines including British Airways and FedEx.
- Airlines are rerouting flights, which has added hours to some journeys or forced carriers to choose alternative routes with other risks.
Passenger planes have been shot out of the sky, airport terminals leveled and parked aircraft destroyed on the tarmac.
Deadly global conflicts have completely disrupted civil aviation, leaving options for safe journeys—particularly between Europe and Asia—fewer and farther between. Houthi strikes on Saudi airports over the past month upended one of the last few remaining routes used by airlines including British Airways and FedEx, tracking data from Flightradar24 shows.
Outside of complete airspace closures and foreign bans, which are generally rare, airlines are left to make their own decisions on where to fly. Airlines face a patchwork of often differing advisories, including from regulators, intelligence agencies and private-security consultants.
In some cases, rerouting flights has added hours to flight times; in other cases, airlines have opted for shorter alternative routes that carry their own risks.
This year has posed an unprecedented challenge to find safe routings, according to Mark Zee, the founder of New York-based OpsGroup, an independent aviation security advisory group. “The conversation is no longer about what’s 100% safe, it’s what is the least risk,” said Zee, a former pilot and flight dispatcher. “And of course, least risk is not low risk.”
Here are some examples of how flights have changed:
British Airways Flight 198: Mumbai to London
British Airways this year has shifted some of its flying through Saudi airspace, which despite repeated Iranian strikes was deemed largely safe to use by aviation safety regulators. The recent Houthi strikes changed that equation, prompting the airline to fly more via Central Asia.
That routing avoids the Saudi airspace and didn’t change the overall flight time. But it comes with its own perils, such as potential spillover from the Russia-Ukraine war or the continuing border war between the Taliban and Pakistan. Afghanistan also lacks active air-traffic control.
Air India Flight 162: London to Delhi
India’s airlines, currently banned from entering Pakistan, now have few good options for their European routings. After initially flying via central Saudi Arabia, Air India now opts for a route that skirts closer to its northern border and the area around Damascus, Syria.
Despite some regulators designating parts of that route as unsafe, it has become an increasingly popular option in recent weeks for airlines including Emirates, Qatar Airways and Turkish Airlines to avoid the Houthi militia threat.
FedEx Flight 5042: Paris to Dubai
It isn’t only passenger jets that are battling to find safe routings. FedEx is among the cargo carriers that have added hours to flights to get to places such as Dubai. The freight giant’s new route—which flies closer to China to minimize time in both Afghan and Pakistani airspace—adds an extra five hours.
“FedEx continues to monitor the situation in the Middle East and adjust our operations for continued service to and from the region,” a company spokesman said.
Qantas Flights 9 and 219: Perth to London
Since 2018, Australia’s biggest airline has operated one of the world’s longest nonstop flights: Perth to London. It dropped the flight path in March, after adjusting the route via Central Asia and finding the distance was untenable. Qantas has been operating the route with a fuel stop in Singapore, adding about four hours to the total journey time.
Zee, who in 2014 was flying the same flight route over Crimea as Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 when it was shot down, started OpsGroup after it emerged that a handful of airlines had received warnings about the risk of passenger jets being targeted over Crimea but hadn’t disseminated the intel.
The organization now has about 10,000 members, including pilots, air-traffic controllers and workers in airline safety and operations departments across the globe. Last week, OpsGroup said Saudi airspace wasn’t safe at any altitude.
“We can’t find a zero-risk route option any longer through the Middle East. It just isn’t there,” Zee said.