LONDON – Aeroflot has today announced it will be operating repatriation flights to Cancun and Punta Cana from Moscow following the Ukraine crisis.
According to the press release, translated from Russian to English, the carrier will operate the following flights:
- March 02 and 05 – SU158/159 Sheremetyevo (departure at 08:20) – Cancun (arrival at 14:05) / Cancun (departure at 16:05) – Sheremetyevo (arrival at 11:55 + 1 day)
- March 03 – SU156/157 Sheremetyevo (departure at 07:30) – Punta Cana (arrival at 13:10) / Punta Cana (departure at 15:00) – Sheremetyevo (arrival at 09:05 + 1 day)
The carrier said the following regarding communication:
“Aeroflot is in constant interaction with the Federal Air Transport Agency, Rostourism and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation on the organization of flights.”
It will be interesting to see how Aeroflot is going to market these flights, particularly if the airline encourages their pilots to state it’s a humanitarian flight.
This would allow aircraft to fly through airspace that they are not allowed to operate in, under new sanctions caused by the invasion of Ukraine.
Via a map developed by AviationSource, there is a significant blockade for Russian-registered aircraft to fly through.
What we do know is that it can still use U.S airspace to get to the likes of Punta Cana and Cancun, but questions of course will arise in how it will actually get to those destinations.
It may very well be the case that the aircraft will have to travel south towards Africa and then head west that way.
We will of course know in the next couple of days what routings the flights will take, so stay tuned to AviationSource for more information on this.
This is a developing story.
