The Chicago Convention of the ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) has several articles, including Article 6:
Article 6 : (Scheduled air services) No scheduled international air service may be operated over or into the territory of a contracting State, except with the special permission or other authorization of that State.
If this pressure was put on by a great many countries (I am assuming that some of them would not agree), would it be possible to effectively prevent any Russian commercial airline from flying out of Russia? Could countries also forbid their own commercial airlines from flying into Russia?
I think we should be looking at as many things as possible to turn Russia into a pariah nation, cut off from the rest of the world until such time as they leave Ukraine alone.
Assorted countries can ban airline overflights by another. I presume it depends how many countries want to cooperate and how many can be pressured to cooperate. Geopolitics is deeply interesting, as in “may you live in interesting times.” If all NATO countries, for example, banned Russian airlines and twisted arms so Jordan and Iraq (and Israel) went along, it could hamper a lot of travel options. Better yet, ban overflight by private business jets favoured by the richer types.
This is more a matter of opinion and speculation than fact, and is by necessity going to involve politics, so let’s move this to IMHO (from FQ). Any factual information regarding treaties, procedures, etc. is of course still welcome.
I am guessing every conceivable option is being explored, but from what I can tell by Biden’s words and actions thus far, they are trying to limit impacts to average Russians, most of whom are likely not celebrating this war, but instead are scratching their collective heads at it. Likely the first targets will be Russian banks and international companies and the oligarches, to make them feel some discomfort so they may pressure Putin to ease-up. Putin wont hear the pleas from rank-and-file Russians whose airline flights were cancelled.
Boris Johnson has already banned Aeroflot from UK. Russia, in retaliation, banned British carriers from their airspace. BA was the only one affected with flights to Moscow. Some UK flights to Asia will now be longer by up to an hour due to rerouting so as to not overfly Russia (banned) or Ukraine (dangerous).
That sounds on the low side to me. My wife and I regularly fly between Western Europe and Japan. The vast majority of the flight time (about 8 hours out of 11) is over Russia. A southerly route avoiding Russia would be much, much longer (if we fly via Dubai the total flight time is 16 hours). A northerly route avoiding Russia would mean going over the Pole, all the way past the eastern tip of Russia, and back to Japan, or west-about over the Pole and down across Alaska.
Does Putin control web access as thoroughly as China does? I’d imagine your Russian-on-the-street could get this news from sources other than Russian media, but I don’t know how much access they actually have.
Russian state media have not been showing Russian forces attacking Kyiv or Kharkiv, the two largest cities in Ukraine, and still describe the invasion as a special military operation in the eastern region of Donbas, Ilyushina reports.
The only real way for Russians to find out what’s happening is through social media, Ilyushina said. However, the country’s internet regulator has been taking steps to slow down Twitter and Facebook, making it increasingly hard for opponents of the invasion to speak out against it.
FWIW: The United States FAA has issued a NOTAM (Notice to Airmen or Notice to Air Missions, depending where you look) 2/9510 – this is the ruling that bans any Russian aviation activity in the United States.
On the surface of it, if taken very literally (and the FAA does tend to take their rules very literally), it seems to ban ALL aviation activity, even including General Aviation, by Russian citizens in the United States (even those who are here legally). It says, in part:
I put a post in the General Aviation thread about it too:
The above post also includes a link to a reddit thread where they are discussing this.