Russian airlines are facing an almost complete blockade from flying west over Europe after they were barred from the airspace of nearly 30 countries following the invasion of Ukraine.
On Sunday evening the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said the whole bloc would close its airspace to Russian aircraft.
Hours earlier, Germany, Italy, France, Portugal, Spain, Norway and Finland had joined the long list of states across the continent that have imposed national bans on Russian aircraft flying overhead.
The UK, Ireland, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia, the Czech Republic and the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia had already taken the step to close their airspace to Russian planes, severely limiting Russia’s options for flying west.
Lithuanian airspace usually provides Russia with the shortest flight to its Kaliningrad exclave – a small parcel of land next to the Baltic Sea between Lithuania and Poland – which has no common border with Russia.
The route of flight SU2500, operated by the Russian national airline, Aeroflot, from Moscow to Madrid on Sunday morning illustrated the changes to flight routing already necessary before Sunday’s wave of bans were announced.
The flight tracker website FlightRadar24 showed the Airbus A321 jet flew north-west across Russia to the Baltic Sea, which it crossed to reach Germany’s northern coast, before travelling across Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France and finally Spain.
