Aeroflot flight to New York turns around mid-flight

The world is getting much smaller for Russian state-owned airline Aeroflot, and that was reflected in Sunday’s flight from Moscow to New York, as seen on Flightradar24.

On Sunday, the European Union and Canada officially banned Russian airlines from using their airspace. While the United States hasn’t yet banned Aeroflot, it looks like Aeroflot may be canceling flights to the United States due to lack of feasible routings to operate these flights, at least temporarily.

This was most evident on Aeroflot flight SU124 from Moscow (SVO/UUEE) to New York (JFK/KJFK) on Sunday, the 27th February 2022. The flight was supposed to depart at 2:40PM and arrive at 5:20PM, the flight was operated by a Boeing 777-3MOER with the registration VP-BHA (MSN 65307).

The flight took off roughly on schedule, and continued a standard northerly routing for around four hours, over Finland and Sweden, and then toward Greenland.

However, I suppose the news that both the EU and Canada are banning Aeroflot caused Aeroflot’s operations people to cut their losses while they could, and have the flight return to base. Without being able to use Canadian airspace, odds are that the plane didn’t have enough fuel to land in New York, and where can the plane even really refuel at that point?

So in the end Aeroflot operated a roughly eight hour flight to nowhere. For context, below is what a standard routing would have looked like for this Aeroflot service.

Aeroflot uses Canadian airspace by lying?

On Sunday morning, Aeroflot flight SU110 from Moscow (SVO/UUEE) to Miami (MIA/KMIA) operated as scheduled, departing at 7:10AM and arriving at 11:50AM. That’s because the flight (which used an Airbus A350-900) operated before both Canada and the European Union officially banned Russian planes.

The return flight was a different story, though. Aeroflot 111 from Miami to Moscow was scheduled to depart at 1:55PM and arrive at 8:35AM on Monday morning. However, by the time the flight departed Miami, new restrictions had already been put in place by both Canada and the European Union.

The world is slowly closing to Russian airlines, with Aeroflot being the most global of those airlines. With new airspace restrictions from the European Union and Canada, Aeroflot decided to turn around on its service between Moscow and New York on Sunday.

Meanwhile Aeroflot’s eastbound transatlantic flights on Sunday also had quite a journey — the flight from Miami still used Canadian airspace, apparently by lying and claiming it was a humanitarian flight. That’s now being investigated.