Airlines argue that China has “unfair advantage of Russian airspace”

Posted by David Henning on 20 February 2023

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the aviation map through Asia has drastically changed, with Air France-KLM CEO arguing that this gives Chinese carriers an unfair advantage.

Chinese carriers have access to Russia’s air space, which can cut down travel time by three hours, according to Air France-KLM CEO, Ben Smith.

‘Between Paris and Seoul, it can add up to three hours in flight time. If you’ve got a Chinese carrier that is flying over Russia, they’ve got an unfair advantage over us,’ Smith commented.

A report by Reuters in December 2022 found that China is in a prime position to take advantage of Asian flights with the country opening up, having retained most of its aviation staff throughout the pandemic and airports keeping around 90% of their employees.

With European and American airlines having to fly around Russian airspace, they also burn more fuel, adding to the high cost of the route.

‘We think that what this will mean is that it will be very hard to make secondary cities of China profitable in terms of flying,’ Finnair CEO, Topi Manner, commented.

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