Flightpaths During Soviet Times
 

I was looking at flightpaths for Korean Airlines 981 flying from Incheon to Vladivostok, Russia & I noticed that they take a very circuitous westward route to avoid North Korean airspace.

It got me wondering: did flights take pains to avoid Soviet airspace prior to 1992? I know that flights between the USA & Asia stopped at Anchorage sometimes, presumably to load fuel. Just how out of the way did flights have to go to avoid Soviet airspace? And when were these restrictions revoked? Anyone remember?

Flightpaths During Soviet Times
 

Not sure however, an old coworker of mine was a retired boat captain (don't know the boating terms, but he helped run different cargo ships). He told me back in the 80s they were near eastern Russia and a big storm hit. To avoid having the boat capsize, they had to go with the flow of the wind and ended up in russian waters. Before they could get the ship turned around, the soviet navy got to them and held them all, without incident, for a week before being turned over to the US navy. Maybe the same situation could have happened to airplanes?

I flew BKK-FRA about 1989 and we entered the Soviet Union for about 20-30 minutes north of Afghanistan/Iran. We were all instructed to close the window shades while we were in Soviet Airspace. This was on Lufthansa.

At least twice the soviets shot down commercial planes inside their territory:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean...nes_Flight_902
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean...nes_Flight_007

Overflights of the Soviet Union were permitted, but with various conditions and restrictions - some political and some practical.

You had to negotiate specific permissions with the Soviets and were assigned specific routes and airways that you could not deviate from. This was usually done on a reciprocal basis for Aeroflot.

Overflight fees charged by the Soviet Union were also quite extortionate - they were quite desperate to get their hands on hard currency.

Finally, overflight of the Soviet Union invariably required that an additional Russian speaking crew member was carried since ATC controllers (mainly in the Asian parts of the Soviet Union) rarely had the appropriate English proficiency to communicate at the expected levels.

Foreign airline crews operating to the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s were treated like VIP guests by the Soviets, although still subjected to lots of surveillance and restrictions. My mother spent 6 months based in Moscow as Air India cabin crew operating flights to/from London and she remembers those days very fondly.

There were no specific requirements to close window shades while overflying Soviet territory, but the Soviet paranoia over photography and taking notes about what one might see there led to most airlines adopting this procedure to avoid getting involved in a nasty international incident.

Hey, cool info thanks! :)

I was instructed to close the window shades whilst in Russian airspace a couple of years ago. Can't remember if this was LH or KL, but definitely one of the two. Is this some kind of a Soviet-era hangover, or just cabin crew who pine for the good old days?

Still today I have heard that foreign airlines (e.g. LH Cargo) must pay those fees to Aeroflot.

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Most countries charge overflight fees, so this is not unique to Russia, and in case of Russia, they do not go to Aeroflot but to some national ministry.

Something I've done a few articles on over time.

Anchorage to Korea/Japan direct just grazes old Soviet airspace, different carriers had different tolerances for what sort of buffer they avoided it by. Bear in mind that in those days there was no GPS or similar precise navigation systems. Flights didn't communicate with Soviet controllers as they weren't entering their FIR, but were monitored by the military.

For the route from Europe to Japan etc this was just not possible over Soviet territory until the late 1960s, because the navigation aids were not in place. Japan Airlines started a flight just to Moscow earlier, but it was operated by the huge intercontinental Aeroflot Tupolev 114 turboprop, with a little JAL sticker attached. When the aids were done in 1969 the Soviets required equal quantities of flights to be operated by each western carrier, Japan AL and Aeroflot (Ilyushin 62 jets by then). The main navaid issue was not the physical aerials, but having English-speaking personnel on them. Initially flights had been required to carry a (Soviet-supplied) interpreter east of Moscow (just like Aeroflot flights to the west did), this later changed to interpreters in the ground stations. They also needed to carry a navigator, at a time when this position had pretty much ceased to exist separately, just to give full attention to keeping on course, because they were backing up the poor radio fixes and first-generation Inertial Navigation with astral navigation ("shooting the stars").

http://betteronacamel.com/Russia-USS...ichards-1970s-

There was an exception to the absence of any overflights in this direction because Finnair, starting well east from Helsinki, devised a routing to Tokyo north of the Soviet land area, wholly over the Arctic, and then with an authorisation to come down over Kamchatka in the Soviet Far East. Finnair had been among the earliest western operators to Moscow in the 1950s, and were sort-of accepted by the Soviets as OK.

A further early route, about 1968, was by SAS from Copenhagen to Bangkok, using DC8s, stopping for fuel in Tashkent. There was no requirement for reciprocal flights on this route but they did need to carry interpreters, all paid for by SAS in hard currency, of course. Where did all the hard currency garnered by Moscow go ? That is a mystery that many Soviet citizens of the time would like to know; they of course never saw a single whiff of it.

By 1969 Pan Am also operated to Moscow, through Copenhagen, and Aeroflot to New York. Pan Am were carrying just a handful of passengers on the 707, and never any Soviet citizens, and eventually gave up, but Aeroflot carried on a couple of times a week, mainly with diplomats to Washington and to the UN.

Actually they do go to Aeroflot, this is an obscure hangover from Soviet days when it was all the same thing.

Not really, there was dreadful accommodation and excessive visa and other bureaucracy. Old BOAC crews hated it - may have been different if from another background. Here are some details from the BEA/BOAC station manager at Moscow 1969-72

http://betteronacamel.com/Russia-USS...ess-1969-1972-

Flightpaths During Soviet Times
 

Interesting. Overflying Cuba is routine. Even for a not regularly scheduled flight, like a reposition, you just send an email to a specific address and they respond in a few minutes with a permit number.

Does Cuba still have a bank account in The Bahamas to send your navigation charges fee to for a private overflight, eg Florida to Jamaica ? All ICAO standard rates and not unreasonable.

It must gall the Cuba-isolationists in Miami Tower a bit to see on radar all the European (and Canadian) operators, and increasingly Latin American ones, including mainstream national carriers, passing off the shores of Florida headed for Havana, Varadero, and various other points. Havana ramp in the late afternoon looks just like a mainstream European airport.

In Soviet days the Red Air Force posting to the bases in Cuba was the absolute pinnacle of achievement. You needed to be well connected with The Kremlin to even stand a chance ! Here's an interesting account of the "Cuba crisis" and afterwards from the other side.

http://www.airforce.ru/history/cold_...a/index_en.htm

On a Qantas flight to London in the '80s (I only went twice, so it was either 87 or 89) we were informed that we would be flying over some Soviet land. I can't remember any more details, except that it wasn't for very long (I seem to recall somewhere between 30 minutes and an hour, but that could be wrong).

Are you sure? I have heard SU is pocketing this money and LH was complaining about that for a long time (paying ATC charges directly to a competitor).