Kazakhstan Airlines airliners orbit Russian airspace. Russia has now closed its airspace to many countries, such as Europe, the United States and Japan, and the only people who can communicate with it are Belarus, the five Central Asian countries, Turkey and China. In particular, the "five Central Asian countries" are relatively close to Russia because of historical and cultural reasons.
The former Soviet Union had fifteen republics, divided into "four sections" from east to west. Now, in addition to the "Central Asia" section in the east, which belongs to "relatives and friends", the west section is full of "enemies", namely Georgia, Ukraine and the Baltic States – these three small countries were previously oppressed, but have become developed countries after independence.
The five Central Asian countries and Russia not only have frequent economic exchanges, but also have relatively close political relations. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Kazakhstan has been considered Russia's biggest ally, and Russian rockets have also been using the "Baikonur Launch Site" to the sky. But in recent years its relations with Russia have begun to regress, and it is no longer the "iron brother" of Belarus. In the recent UN General Assembly vote condemning Russia, it also did not support Russia.
If you don't support it, you can do it "not far away" like China or India. But believe it or not, now Kazakhstan has shown signs of "anti-water" in its relations with Russia, and it has begun to want to "stay away from Russia". Last week, its state-owned airline Astana announced itself as "grounded in Moscow," which felt very inexplicable.
Now Air Astana has not only grounded its flights to Russia, but has also voluntarily stopped using Russian airspace. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia is still the largest country in the world, and it is more fuel-intensive to fly around. Even if the countries that voted in favor of the "GENERAL Assembly condemnation", such as Turkey and South Korea, some of their aircraft are still flying over Russia (note: South Korea has taken a detour); why should Astana give up the near and far and pay for itself?
For example, last week, Air Astana launched the Nur-Sultan-London route using the A321LR aircraft, and the pilots found that its route was actually going south around the Caucasus and along the Turkish-Romanian-German line to London. That's about 800 nautical miles more than crossing Russian airspace directly from the north, or an extra hour and a half.
Russia has not banned Kazakh planes from transit, nor has it said it will not allow it to go to Moscow. Air Astana's move was interpreted by the Western media as "fearing becoming the next victim and starting to watch out for Russia", while others said it was a self-cutting effort to show that it was "standing with the majority of the world". I don't know chinese flying friends, Zan does not agree with these "high theories". (Close the curtains/text)
