BA announced its withdrawal from Beijing this week. Flights to Hong Kong and Shanghai will remain, but for how long? This isn’t really a surprise, given that European airlines are banned from Russian airspace and have to take detours to reach cities in the Far East. If it were a level playing field, it wouldn’t be so bad, but the problem is that Chinese airlines are still allowed to cross Russian airspace. A look at flight schedules shows that BA takes an average of 1.5 hours longer to fly to Chinese destinations and 2.5 hours to return. This longer flight time means more fuel – a big cost for the airline – and more crew to cover required rest periods. As you can imagine, BA struggles to be competitive on price. On most days, BA is about $300-$400 more expensive than its Chinese rivals. While some EU airlines are finding creative ways to get around the Russian airspace ban, the restrictions mean that airlines like BA (and Virgin Atlantic, which will pull out of Shanghai this autumn) are unable to compete and maintain their routes. I think that in the coming months, more EU airlines will be removing Far East destinations from their schedules. The Russia-Ukraine situation is not going to resolve itself anytime soon, and with Chinese airlines expanding like never before, it will be many years before trans-Eurasian travel returns to the way it used to. Do you agree?
