“SIA apologises to all affected customers for the inconvenience caused,” Singapore Airlines announced Monday after it suspended until further notice service between Singapore and Moscow.
Turkish Airlines said flights between the southern Russian city of Sochi and Minsk, the capital of Belarus, had been cancelled, along with service between Chisinau, Moldova, and Rostov, a Russian city not far from eastern Ukraine.
The carrier had already announced that it was forced to suspend service to six Ukrainian cities: Kyiv, Kharkov, Lviv, Odesa, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, after the country’s airspace was closed Thursday. Although the Turkish flag carrier normally operates 86 flights to Ukraine every week, it announced as of today that flights would be halted until March 15.
Despite the large number of cancellations, the Turkish carrier said in a statement: “We are continuing our preparations to evacuate our citizens in Ukraine after flight security is maintained and necessary permissions are granted.”
On Monday, Emirates’ partner airline Flydubai made a similar decision, saying it has cancelled flights to Russia, Ukraine and Belarus due to the closure of the airspace over these areas. The company has suspended five flights, including routes to Kyiv, Odessa, Minsk, until March 8.
Japan Airlines (JAL) on Thursday announced the cancellation of its service from Tokyo to Moscow, saying it had done so “in light of the current situation in Russia and Ukraine.” In a separate statement on Monday, Japan’s second-largest airline said, “We will continue to closely monitor the situation in Russia and Ukraine.”
JAL said service to other European cities would continue after confirming the safety of the airspace. The airline said its flights do not cross over Ukraine.
Even before the invasion many Asian airlines avoided the region’s airspace. Singapore Airlines tweeted on Wednesday that its “flights have not traversed the airspace near the Ukraine-Russia border in several years.”
While Thai Airways International does not operate direct flights to Russia or Ukraine, the company’s board member in charge of the company’s rehabilitation, Piyasvasti Amranand, said at a news conference on Monday: “Since 2014, Thai Airways has not flown over Ukrainian skies.”
In 2014, 298 people on a Malaysia Airlines jet flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur were killed after it was shot down over eastern Ukraine.
European airlines, meanwhile, have begun to take alternative routes on flights to and from Asia to avoid Russian airspace. German airline Lufthansa announced Sunday that it would not use Russian airspace for a week. Traditionally neutral Switzerland announced the closure of its airspace to all flights from Russia, starting Monday.
Route changes are beginning to affect travel in Asia. Following the suspension of service to Russia, as well as overflights of Russian airspace, on Sunday, Air France said flight times on routes to China, South Korea and Japan would be longer.
Qantas of Australia, meanwhile, announced Sunday that flights between the northern Australian city of Darwin and London, which previously flew over northern Russia, would instead take a route through the Middle East and Southern Europe. The new routes would increase flying time by around one hour, the airline said.