After a month of war in Ukraine, the European sky is adjusting. While Russian airspace is blacklisted by airlines, some countries are taking advantage of the route changes, such as Georgia and Hungary. In Poland, the number of overflights has decreased by 33% since the beginning of the conflict, while in the Baltic countries there are mixed trends.
Two weeks after the first flight booking statistics emerged, Eurcontrol released a report on the impact of the war in Ukraine on European skies.
A drop in purchases of air tickets was recorded, but that’s not all, because it also affected flights in Europe. According to Eurocontrol, commercial flights are paralyzed in Ukraine, flights over Moldova are interrupted and remain highly disrupted in Russia and Belarus.
The European Organization for the Safety of Air Navigation took two examples to assess the situation, namely the cases of Lithuania and Hungary. The two countries have very different dynamics.
Lithuania lost almost 200 flights per day (-46%). More than half of this reduction in overflights is due to the cessation of flows to and from Russia, especially from Germany, France and the UK. This also applies to Poland (-33%) and Latvia (-25%).
At the same time, flights between Turkey and Russia continue, but they have decreased by about 30%. Erdogan’s country is becoming, like Serbia and Dubai, a hub for Russian tourists.
To get to Asia, European carriers head south, bypassing Russia, for example, through Georgia. In this country, the number of flights increased by 76%.
In Hungary, overflights increased by almost 30% in one month (290 flights per day), which is largely due to the redirection of flows to Asia and the Middle East to the south, but this accounts for about a third of the change (100 flights per day). Romania also benefits from these route adjustments.