A flight from Helsinki to Tokyo used to be a straightforward dash across Siberia. Not any more. Since Russia barred EU and UK carriers from its airspace in 2022 — retaliation for Western bans on Russian airlines after the invasion of Ukraine — Europe-Northeast Asia flights have been rerouted over the Arctic, the Middle East or Central Asia. Finnair's Japan and Korea services now take roughly a third longer than they did before the closure, and the detours come with a fuel bill to match.
It's not just European carriers. Airlines from Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have largely steered clear of Russian airspace too, mainly over safety concerns, which means most traffic on this corridor is flying the long way round.
New analysis from aviation analytics firm Skailark puts a number on it: on identical routes with identical aircraft, carriers avoiding Russian airspace burn 13.8% more fuel per flight than rivals — chiefly Chinese airlines — that still overfly Russia. The firm compared 2019 figures with the period from March 2025 to June 2026.
Scaled across the corridor, that extra fuel works out to around 1.53 million metric tons of additional carbon dioxide every year — roughly 12% of the total emissions from these flights. For airlines that have publicly committed to net-zero targets by 2050, it's an awkward problem. Carriers like Finnair built their business model on the short polar-adjacent routing between Europe and Asia; losing it has hit both their economics and their environmental credentials at the same time.
The climate impact is really a side effect of a geopolitical standoff with no clear end date. Airlines can't fix it with newer planes or sustainable fuel alone — the fundamental geometry of the route has changed. Until Russian airspace reopens to Western carriers, every Europe-Asia ticket carries an invisible carbon surcharge.
Why should travellers care? If you're flying between Europe and Japan, Korea or China, expect longer flight times, more schedule disruption potential, and a bigger carbon footprint per trip than pre-2022 equivalents. If offsetting your flights matters to you, be aware the actual emissions on these routes are likely higher than standard calculators suggest. It also explains why some European carriers have trimmed or restructured their Asia networks while Chinese competitors, flying shorter and cheaper routes, have gained ground on the same city pairs.
There's a practical upside for flyers, though: competition on the corridor means European airlines are working hard to make the detours workable, and Chinese carriers' routings can mean noticeably shorter journey times if you're flexible about where you connect.
Story via Skift.
