Next week, we’ll be flying on one of Delta’s newest planes, the Airbus A330-900neo, from Minneapolis to Tokyo. In normal times this journey would take us through Russian airspace. However, due to the war in Ukraine, this is no longer possible.
On most of my previous trips to Japan, flights have passed through Russian airspace for several hours. They flew over the Kamchatka Peninsula, then followed the line of the Kuril Islands in the Sea of Okhotsk to Hokkaido. It was reassuring to know we were above or near land for much of the journey.
Here, for example, is a snapshot of the moving map as I travelled from Chicago ORD to Tokyo HND in October 2022.
The map shows the shortest route from Alaska to Japan via Russian airspace. The actual route veered south into international airspace.
Under an international agreement, international airspace begins 12 nautical miles (about 14 miles) from land. However, the Kurils are a chain of islands, an archipeligo. “The sovereignty of archipelagic airspace is not the same as other territorial airspace, as aircraft have the right of ‘continuous and expeditious’ passage, so cannot be denied transit through this area.”
All this got me wondering what would happen if both Rolls-Royce engines start failing while flying near Russia. The A330-900neo has an ETOPS (Extended Twin-Engine Operations) rating of 285 minutes, which means the plane is rated to fly for up to 285 minutes from the nearest airport, about 2,300 miles. Pretty amazing.
