Ivan Zubov
As Novye Izvestiya has already reported, after 10 years the skies of Syria may open again for Russian airlines. The ban was introduced by the Federal Air Transport Agency in 2013, after a Nordwind aircraft with 160 Russians on board was fired upon over Syria - two surface-to-air missiles were fired at it. They exploded next to the liner, but neither the passengers nor the aircraft itself were injured. Now, the iFly airline has asked Rosaviatsia to open a 240-kilometer air corridor in the Syrian sky for flying to Egypt. Rosaviatsia sent a request to the Russian Foreign Ministry, they are not against lifting restrictions, but this issue needs to be agreed with the Ministry of Defense.
However, the Federal Air Transport Agency itself called the sky of Syria potentially dangerous for the flights of civil aircraft, the Aviatorshchina channel reports. The Ministry of Defense confirms that the situation in the airspace of Syria remains difficult and dangerous, as Israel continues to launch missile attacks on targets in this country, and Syrian air defense, in turn, strikes air targets.
And the thing is that it has become much more difficult for Russian airlines to get to Egypt than before: Jordan began to refuse them flights over its territory, the Aviatorshchina channel reports, citing its sources. The Jordanian authorities are now requiring Russian airlines to provide them with third-party aviation insurance with reinsurance in the English market, which is closed to Russia due to sanctions. Two domestic companies, Nordwind and i-Fly, have already faced these requirements.
Channel experts are surprised by the fact that instead of canceling flights and starting work on transferring tourists to planes of other airlines, iFly, which has not yet submitted the necessary documents to the Federal Air Transport Agency on the safe use of the Syrian sky, convinces journalists that it will fly to Egypt through Syria, although she did not receive consent to this. Despite this, the airline is rescheduling flights to and from Egypt instead of canceling them and refunding tourists.
Aeroflot’s situation is no better with flights to Thailand, so beloved by Russians: due to the ban for the same “insurance reason” by the aviation authorities of Laos in flight over its territory, already long flights to Thailand have become another 4 hours longer.
Now the airline is forced to operate flights from Vladivostok to Bangkok on Boeing 737-800 along an extended route and with an intermediate stop for refueling (about 12 hours on the way) instead of the previous direct seven hours. In addition, passengers face numerous delays and transfers of flights, as well as the loss of connections.
The channel claims that the authorities of Laos have not confirmed to Aeroflot the application for a flight over their territory, although an agreement on this was reached even before the opening of the program of flights from Russian regions to Thailand.
It remains to add that on October 1, 2022, Russia was not re-elected as a member of the governing board of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) at the UN, and on October 4, it was finally expelled from the governing bodies of this most authoritative aviation structure in the world.