As wars in Ukraine and Gaza continue to rage, some airlines are profiting | Aviation

Earlier this month, British Airways announced that it would suspend its service between London and Beijing from October and until at least November 2025.

It is the latest in a series of Western airlines cutting services between the US, Canada, Europe and Asia. Virgin Atlantic will cut its only service to mainland China in the autumn, blaming costly diversions due to restricted Russian airspace.

Since the war in Ukraine began, Western airlines have flown south of Russia through much of the Middle East to avoid Russian airspace. But recent escalations with Israel and Iran have made it increasingly difficult for airlines to avoid disputed conflict zones and the risks they entail.

In recent months, both Iran and Israel have been accused of GPS spoofing – a practice that involves sending inaccurate location signals to satellites to deter attacks on civilian targets on the ground.

However, GPS spoofing also impacts ordinary people who rely on GPS systems every day, such as food delivery apps or aircraft navigation systems. This puts pilots in a dangerous position because in some cases it has led to aircraft flying blind, relying solely on visible landmarks rather than a global positioning system (GPS).

In March, a Turkish plane bound for Beirut in Lebanon had to turn around after it was unable to land due to a fake signal.

In July, Lebanon’s Ministry of Telecommunications filed a complaint with the United Nations International Telecommunication Union (ITU) about Israel’s use of the technology to repel Hezbollah attacks.

“Interference or spoofing has always been quite rare. GPS outages might have occurred, but spoofing a location was almost unthinkable. That has changed recently,” Ken Munro, partner at Pen Test Partners, a cybersecurity consultancy, told Al Jazeera.

OpsGroup, which monitors risks across the aviation industry, has seen a 400 percent increase in spoofing incidents in recent months, affecting an average of 900 flights per day.

Earlier this year, the US Federal Aviation Administration warned pilots about the technology when flying over conflict zones. The FAA urged pilots not to rely on GPS systems in such areas.

As tensions escalate, now involving Iran, which is also accused of using the technology and disrupting the operation of civilian aircraft, airlines are withdrawing from the region.

“Civil airlines had to quickly develop procedures to deal with this,” Munro said.

Several airlines have begun temporarily withdrawing from the region. Delta and United have temporarily suspended flights to Tel Aviv. LOT and Aegean Airlines have also suspended flights to Beirut. Others, including Lufthansa, have also suspended flights to Amman, Jordan.

British and Egyptian regulators have asked airlines from their respective countries to avoid Lebanese airspace.

Jordanian authorities have asked airlines flying to the country to keep additional fuel reserves on hand as some flights may be diverted in the event of an escalation.

Security concerns

“The reason is safety,” Bijan Vasigh, an economics professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, told Al Jazeera. “We have many examples of accidents that have cost passengers their lives. Israel shot down a Libyan passenger plane in 1973, Iran shot down a Ukrainian passenger plane in 2020, and Russia shot down a Korean passenger plane in 1983, and so on. Airlines are rightly trying to take a proactive role to protect passengers.”

However, this also has an impact on the traffic crossing the region. One of the most important routes between Europe and the Middle East passes through the airspace over northern Iraq, which lies on the border with Iran.

In September 2023, there were several reports of GPS losses on aircraft traveling on this route, including a business flight between Europe and Dubai that nearly entered sensitive Iranian airspace without authorization.

Around that time, OpsGroup reported that Iran had threatened to shoot down a plane that had entered Iranian airspace without authorization. It is not certain whether it was the same plane. In 2020, Iran accidentally shot down a Ukrainian passenger plane, killing all 176 people on board. Iran sentenced 10 members of its armed forces to prison for shooting down the plane. The commander received a 13-year sentence, and the other defendants faced one to three years in prison.

In recent weeks, airlines such as Singapore Airlines and Finnair have announced that they will avoid Iranian airspace for security reasons in light of the escalating conflict with Israel. Finnair said in its April announcement that this could increase flight times to and from Doha, Qatar.

A Finnair spokesman told Al Jazeera that the measure had increased flight times by one hour.

This is a double-edged sword, especially for Iran. Airlines pay countries money to use their airspace through so-called overflight fees. In 2020, Iran began courting international airlines using its airspace to earn more money, offering airlines discounts of up to 50 percent in return.

Russia is also accused of GPS spoofing, thereby disrupting flights to neighboring countries such as Lithuania and Estonia. In April, Finnair temporarily suspended a route to Tartu in Estonia, not far from the Russian border.

Chinese airlines intervene

But not all airlines are banned from Russian airspace, and GPS spoofing tactics have not deterred airlines from countries with closer diplomatic ties to Moscow. This means that some Middle Eastern and Asian airlines have a strategic advantage, and Chinese airlines in particular are benefiting from this.

“If you are a European airline flying from London or Frankfurt to Southeast Asia or Northeast Asia, you would normally fly through Russian airspace. You can’t do that anymore,” John Grant, chief analyst at OAG Aviation, a data analytics and intelligence firm, told Al Jazeera.

Since there are no restrictions on Russian airspace for airlines from the Middle East and Asia, they can continue to use key routes such as London-Beijing without any competition in the market, nor do they have to deal with the same concerns about GPS spoofing in and around Iran, Israel and their neighboring countries.

“European airlines have had to add three to five hours of extra round-trip flights in some cases, driving up costs. That is a price that Chinese airlines do not have to pay,” Grant said.

Chinese airlines have continued to expand their offerings in the West. In June, Air China opened new flights to London airports as British Airways wanted to withdraw completely from the Chinese capital.

Since Chinese airlines such as Air China and China Southern can use Russian airspace, their flight time is at least an hour shorter than British Airways’ route, according to data from Flightradar24.

“A jumbo jet like a 787, 777 or Airbus A380 burns about 40,000 gallons of fuel. If an airline increases the distance by 10 percent, a flight would be about $12,000 more expensive due to fuel costs alone. So if you burn a little bit more fuel, that route is no longer economically viable,” Vasigh explained.

China Eastern Airlines, Air China, China Southern Airlines, Juneyao Airlines and Shanghai Airlines have all resumed flights to Europe this summer as demand has increased significantly. Juneyao in particular has experienced a growth spurt, recording an increase in flight frequency from Europe of over 182 percent in the last year alone, according to OAG.

“Companies regularly evaluate the economics of their flight routes, weighing factors such as fuel costs, flight times, competitive advantages and market access against potential risks,” Vasigh said. “Shorter routes via Russia often mean lower fuel consumption and shorter travel times, which can lead to better aircraft utilization and potentially more flights per day. This can provide a significant competitive advantage, especially on routes between Europe and Asia.”

Push back

When US President Joe Biden’s administration approved more flights from China on Chinese airlines – albeit still well below pre-Covid-19 levels – some lawmakers objected.

Republican Congressman Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin and Democratic Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois urged the Biden administration in a letter not to allow further expansions by airlines operating in Russian airspace, citing an unfair market advantage. (The latest approvals, however, did not include flights over Russian airspace.)

Other global airlines are also calling for similar restrictions from the European Union. Air France-KLM boss Ben Smith has long been outraged by this and believes that flights via Russia have an unfair competitive advantage and should therefore no longer be allowed to land in Europe.

Industry association Airlines for America said U.S. airlines lose $2 billion in revenue annually by avoiding Russian airspace.

At the same time, it is also a hindrance to the Russian economy. Before the attack on Ukraine and the sanctions that followed, the global aviation industry brought Russia $1.7 billion annually. Russia has made up for some of this loss by increasing overflight fees by 20 percent for those who continue to use its airspace.

But with popular routes like London-Beijing now a financial maze for Western airlines, these overflight fees are a price worth paying for Chinese airlines to have more control over a route.

With tensions between Russia, Ukraine, Israel and Iran increasing rather than abating, it is unclear if and when there will be a return to the status quo.

“Someone asked me once if I’ve ever seen such a change in the market, with such a large amount of airspace closed for so long. The answer is no,” said Grant of OAG Aviation.

“This has an impact on many airlines, who will have to change their operations to survive these times.”