Is Korean Air rerouting to avoid North Korea
 

I have a flight that takes me through South Korea on Korean Air next week. With all of the military action taking place in North Korea, does anyone have any thought on what Korean Air is doing to avoid problems?

I think it's SOP for them to stay out of North Korean airspace in the first place.

I know it's SOP for American carriers to avoid North Korean airspace.

Back in March when N. Korea was posturing about its airspace, I was on UA from SFO-ICN. Watching the airmap onboard, it appeared that we essentially flew from SFO-NRT and then made a right turn towards ICN.

I tried mapping the flight on the great circle mapper online and that isn't the route.

Is this always the case or is it just during times of greater tension?

KE has never flown anywhere near North Korean airspace in all the times I have ever been on them. I assume they never do.

I've flown ORD-ICN on KE and OZ and ORD-NRT-ICN on UA many times. They've all given the DPRK a wide berth. For the flights to ICN, they've done as stated above -- flown to Japan, then turned back north to ICN. I seem to recall someone saying that they once when the other way around through Russia and China, but that seems long.

Call me selfish, but one of the things that will make me happy when reunification comes is that it'll shave a good 45-60 minutes off the flying time to ICN.

No-one flies over DPRK airspace except the one or two flights from PEK to Pyongyang. Anyone taking off from ICN on the north pointing runways will note that you bank fairly sharply after take-off. Apparently N. Korea uses civil airliners taking off from ICN as target practice for their radars. However, they've never fired any missiles.:D

They leave that to the Russians when KAL overflies the Kam Peninsula! ;)

Actually LH does fly over north korean airspace or at least used to. They even mentioned in in a publication somewhere.

They certainly didn't last time I flew MUC-ICN. The routing was clearly over China - I think we left China somewhere around Qingdao.

Well, Germany isn't at war with North Korea.
You might find that airlines from the 23 nations that are techically at war with North Korea are likely going to avoid North Korean airspace. Airlines from nother nations may not have as much reason to.

The real question is if we get extra miles out of the longer route...

That's the FT spirit! :D