The world’s longest nonstop flight, from Singapore to New York JFK, would travel straight over the North Pole if it were to fly straight, but it doesn’t do that. Instead, the departing SQ24 flies over the Pacific Ocean and Canada before arriving in New York, while the returning SQ23 often travels across the Atlantic Ocean, Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia before arriving in Singapore. This is because both flights take advantage of favorable oceanic tailwinds that shorten overall flight time, despite the ground distance being longer.

This is a common practice in long-haul international routes, as flying with a favorable tailwind or avoiding strong headwinds can cut minutes off of flight times, which adds up to hours. However, in recent years, there’s been a notable uptick in airlines avoiding non-circuitous routings on their long-haul routes, opting to fly over Central Asia when connecting Europe to Asia, for example. The unusual routings from Europe to Asia, however, have nothing to do with strong tailwinds or headwinds.

The Impact Of The Jet Stream

Credit: Shutterstock

The upper atmosphere houses rapidly moving, narrow air currents called the jet streams. These winds typically flow from west to east, and are strongest near the north and south poles, flowing in excess of 110 mph (180 km/h). The northern polar jet streams are the most impactful to airlines, since they directly affect a high volume of flights operating over North America, the Atlantic Ocean, Europe, Asia, and the Pacific Ocean, while the southern polar jet streams affect relatively few flights.

Airlines make significant efforts to route their eastbound flights within the jet stream, taking advantage of strong tailwinds to cut flight times and therefore reduce fuel burn. This doesn’t result in significantly different routes on shorter transatlantic routes, but it does result in longer flights being concentrated over the North Atlantic and North Pacific oceans, even when the great circle route may be closer to the North Pole. However, this depends on how strong the jet stream winds are on a given day.

Consequently, airlines need to take into consideration strong jet stream winds when flying westbound: just as eastbound flights can shave off hours when flying with a tailwind, flying westbound in the jet stream can add hours. As such, airlines consciously route their westbound flights around the east stream as a result. For example, you’ll often see longer transatlantic flights, such as between the Middle East and Texas, fly north of the polar jet stream when traveling to the US.

The Closure Of Russian Airspace

Credit: Shutterstock

After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia opened up its airspace to several European and Asian carriers, allowing these airlines to more or less fly straight-line routes between Europe and East Asia. This saved airlines significant time on these routes and allowed for many more routes to be economically operated as a result. Of course, Russian overflight fees were also correspondingly high, and unlike most nations, Russia only allowed select airlines from specific nations to fly over Siberian airspace.

In 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, and the world began imposing sanctions on Russia as a response, with Russia responding in part by closing its airspace. With this, the world had slid back decades, to a time when Soviet airspace was forbidden to essentially all international carriers and airlines connecting Europe to East Asia had to take significantly longer routes. Often, airlines needed to make fuel stops on these routes right up until the fall of the USSR in 1991.

Today, modern airliners have enough range that they can still operate routes between East Asia and Europe nonstop, but they need to fly either south or north of Russia. This adds hours to flight times, worsening the economics of operating these routes, and these added costs have been passed to the customer, resulting in higher fares. Furthermore, the airspace restrictions led to some airlines having to temporarily suspend routes, although many of these returned once it became clear that the closure of Russian airspace would be permanent.

The Impact Of Russian Airspace Restrictions

Credit: Shutterstock

The reroutes required to avoid Siberian airspace have affected Finnair in particular. The carrier previously positioned itself as offering the shortest itineraries between Europe and Asia via its hub in Helsinki, but flights from Helsinki to Asia have seen perhaps the biggest increase in flight times since the war. Like other carriers, Finnair has to route its routes to travel over Central Asia or to fly over the North Pole, with the carrier selecting the North Pole route more often than other European airlines due to Helsinki’s location.

Finnair has responded by diversifying its network, while also leasing some of its planes to other airlines. Many European carriers, which were less reliant on Asia than Finnair, have had to eat the added flight time and raise ticket prices due to the higher operating costs. Flights from Western European hubs to Tokyo can sometimes take over 13 hours, while routes to cities such as Hong Kong are less affected due to their location, but can still last over 12 hours.

Perhaps the most unorthodox routing between the two continents, however, is to fly the other way around the world. This is particularly common on flights departing Tokyo, where aircraft will first fly over the Pacific Ocean and over North America, before crossing the Atlantic Ocean and arriving in Europe. This is advantageous in part because these flights can take advantage of jet stream tailwinds despite the longer ground distance. However, flights from Europe to Asia universally travel eastwards.

The Impact Of Middle East Airspace Restrictions

Credit: Shutterstock

On the surface, the most direct impact of the current conflict in the Middle East is on flights headed to or from the region. Emirates, Etihad Airways, Qatar Airways, as well as almost every carrier based in the region is operating with a reduced schedule. Furthermore, most foreign carriers have cut all of their flights to major destinations such as Dubai, Tel Aviv, and Doha, with their restart dates unclear due to the ongoing nature of the conflict. However, this also has implications for flights that overfly the Middle East.

This directly impacts routes between Europe and South Asia, Southeast Asia, Oceania, as well as between North America and South Asia. Ordinarily, these flights would fly close to or over the Middle East, but they now primarily travel east of the closed airspace, typically overflying Türkiye, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan in the process. In addition, some flights may elect to fly west of the Middle East, traveling over the Red Sea, although this is less common.

Middle Eastern airspace restrictions also affect the aforementioned flights from Europe to East Asia, as these flights could previously route via the Middle East in some cases. However, they now have to be condensed into a narrow flight corridor that’s also shared with other aircraft headed to Southeast Asia or Oceania. This includes routes such as Qantas’s nonstop services from Perth to Europe, and this level of concentration is leading to congestion issues.

The Closure Of Pakistani Airspace

Credit: Shutterstock

Today, Air India operates its routes from North America to India nonstop, but its departures to New York JFK and Newark stop in Rome, while its flights to Chicago and Toronto make a technical stop in Vienna. This is because Pakistani airspace has been closed to Indian airlines since 2025, as a response to Indian missile strikes as part of Operation Sindoor. In May 2025, Pakistan closed its airspace to all airlines, but then reopened it shortly afterwards to all airlines except Indian carriers. Currently, the reopening date is set for May 24, 2026.

This has implications for Air India more than any other Indian airline, as it held a competitive advantage over US or Canadian carriers, due to still being able to use Russian airspace, allowing it to offer shorter flights to North America. This advantage has largely been erased, making Air India less competitive, and prices have generally gone up due to the added operating costs.

Airlines don’t price their tickets based on operating cost, but large increases in flight time do eat into margins, and when airspace restrictions occur industry-wide, carriers use the opportunity to raise fares while citing increased costs. When other airlines do the same, this has essentially no impact on an airline’s competitiveness, and with airlines now also struggling with rising fuel costs, tickets are likely to only become more expensive.