this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2025
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What’s that strange curve in Russia? Trying to avoid flying over something specific?
That would be the Ural mountains.
There are several trans-continental routes crossing Russia (N/S, most ending at Aktobe, Kazakhstan, continuing to Dubai), most of them are grouped either on the west or the east side of the Urals.
What would happen if you flew over the mountains anyway? Would the turbulence spill your coffee or something worse?
Either ATC would have you copy a phone number, or the military would send you a high-explosive welcome package. Not sure which is worse.
I don't know exactly why, but there's a conspicuous lack of navigation waypoints over the Urals. It's probably not a safe idea to have aircraft cross over a mountain range when it can be avoided. Most of the airways cross directly west-to-east.
Checking the map here, maybe they're going well around Moscow airspace? Also, if they were to take a straighter shot from Greenland today, they'd be flying through an active war zone, that's surely worth avoiding.
Wasn’t there this one civilian flight that got shot by a missile when it went over a warzone? I recall hearing some news about it like 10 years ago. Can’t remember who shot them though.
That would be Malaysian Airlines 17, shot down by a Russian surface-to-air missile over Donetsk. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17
Yeah, that’s the one. Sounds like a good idea to steer clear of war zones.
I think the most direct path would be over Ukraine and they're going around so the curve is to come back in? Just a guess.
It's avoiding the Ural mountains. Even straightening out that curve on the southward leg of the route would still only pass over the Caspian sea, which is still quite far from Ukraine
I thought that it could be mountains, but I couldn’t seen any on the map.