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by being one of the first 200 people to sign up at Brilliant.org/Wendover. This is East Asia—comprised of China, Japan,
Korea, and Taiwan—and this is Europe. 2.4 billion people live in these two areas—a
third of the world’s population. More impressively, each of these two regions
have a GDP of about $20 trillion. Combined, just these countries account for
half of the world’s economic activity. They are two of the world’s most dense,
most developed, and m ost economically interlinked regions and are home to the world’s largest
and most influential cities yet laying between them is just one country—Russia. This more of less means that one country controls
whether Europe can get to Asia and vice versa and for a while, they couldn’t. During the cold war, almost universally, non-soviet
airlines were not allowed to fly over the Soviet Union. This proved a huge barrier to travel. In the 1950’s, flying on BOAC, which later
became British Airways, the fastest route from London to Tokyo involved leaving London
at 10am on Friday and stopping in Rome, Beirut, Bahrain, Karachi, Calcutta, Yangon, Bangkok,
and Manila before finally arriving in Tokyo at 6am on a Sunday. All in all, that was 36 hours and 10,000 miles
of travel to get between two cities 6,000 miles apart and that was also their fastest
service on the Comet jet plane. Their slower and cheaper propeller plane service
would leave London on a Sunday and not arrive in Tokyo until Thursday after 88 hours of
travel. It was just hugely inefficient but there was
a better way—over the Arctic. SAS was the first to develop routes overflying
the Arctic but other airlines soon followed. These routes were first used to get to the
American west coast faster. This involved developing new navigation systems
to overcome the issue of traditional magnetic compasses not working properly in the high
north. In the 1950’s no commercial airplane had
the range to fly to the American west coast non-stop but with SAS’s new polar route
they would take a relatively quick route from Copenhagen stopping in Kangerlussuaq, Greenland
and Winnipeg, Canada before arriving in Los Angeles. This cut what was previously a 36 hour trip
down to 22. With SAS having proven that commercial flights
over the Arctic were both safe and commercially viable, other airlines quickly followed not
only setting up routes to the American west coast but also to the far east. The most direct route from London to Tokyo
flies over Siberia, but since that airspace was closed airlines chose another way—the
other way around the world. In 1960, only 40,000 people lived in Anchorage,
Alaska and Alaska had just became a state the year before, but its airport emerged as
a crucial stopping point between Europe and Asia. BOAC’s thrice weekly polar route from London
to Tokyo would leave Heathrow at 1:45 pm, arrive in Anchorage nine and a half hours
later, stop for an hour to refuel, and then fly the remaining seven hours to Tokyo. All in all, it was timetabled to take only
seventeen and a half hours—half of what the trip took before. It was as drastic a reduction in travel time
as when Concorde cut New York to London flights from six hours to three. BOAC wasn’t the only one. All the major European carriers set up routes
to the far east via Anchorage in the 1960s and 1970s. While Anchorage sees only a few dozen daily
commercial flights mostly to the continental US today, in the 1970s it was served by Air
France, SAS, KLM, Iberia, Lufthansa, Japan Airlines, Korean Air, and more. This tiny town in Alaska quickly became one
of the most connected and cosmopolitan areas of the world with passengers and flight crews
from all around the world stopping over all because of where it was. As aircraft became more advanced with longer
range, there were a few airlines that managed to avoid stopping in Anchorage on their way
from Europe to East Asia. Finnair, for example, starting flying from
Helsinki to Tokyo non-stop in 1983 by flying in international airspace north of Russia
over the North Pole. This made what is today a nine hour flight
thirteen hours but it was still faster than stopping in Anchorage. Overwhelmingly, though, airlines continued
to fly through Anchorage. Eventually, though, the Soviet Union did of
course fall in 1991 and with that Russia started to grant overflight rights to European and
East Asian airlines. They first had to modernize and anglicize
their air traffic control system. All international pilots and air traffic controllers
worldwide speak English but before, since there were few international flights over
Russia, the Russian air traffic controllers didn’t speak english. Once the changes were made, airlines quickly
switched to flying non-stop from Europe to Asia over Siberia. That left Anchorage largely deserted. The airport built a large and modern international
terminal in 1982 to handle all the traffic passing through the airport but then, less
than ten years later, all those airlines that kept the airport busy left in droves. Today, that international terminal, built
to handle hundreds of flights per month, only sees a flight every few days. Russia, meanwhile, is prospering thanks to
the opening up of its airspace. Flying to Asia over Siberia saves airlines
huge amounts of time and money so Russia therefore charges airlines huge amounts of money to
do so. Exact numbers vary by airline and are kept
secret, but for each roundtrip flight between Europe and Asia, Siberian overflight fees
are believed to account for up to $100 of a single passenger’s ticket price. Russia has an enormous amount of power by
controlling this airspace and they use it to their advantage. 133 countries have signed the International
Civil Aviation Organization’s Transit Agreement which essentially allows any airline from
any country to fly through the signatory’s airspace but Russia, however, has not, so
they can pick and choose which country’s airlines get to fly through their airspace. The country can and has used its airspace
as a geopolitical weapon—in 2014 they threatened to shut down their airspace to European Union
airlines in response to sanctions, in 2017 they threatened to close the airspace to Dutch
airlines in response to a reduction in landing slots for a Russian airline at Schiphol airport,
and in April 2018 they tacitly threatened to close their airspace to US airlines in
response to US military action in Syria. But Russia not only decides which countries
can fly in its airspace, it also decides which specific airlines. There is more or less a rule that only one
airline per European country can overfly Russia. There are certainly exceptions—both British
Airways and Virgin Atlantic are London based, for example, but both overfly Siberia on their
routes to Shanghai and Hong Kong, but Air France is the only French airline with Siberian
overflight rights, Lufthansa is the only German airline with overflight rights, Iberia is
the only Spanish airline with overflight rights, and so on and so forth. For the longest while, this wasn’t a problem. European countries aren’t that big and few
had more than one intercontinental airline but nowadays, however, that’s changing. We’re seeing more and more budget airlines
competing with the large, established carriers on long-haul routes but, with this system
of overflight permissions, the legacy carriers more or less have a monopoly on east Asian
routes. SAS, for example, operates out of Norway,
Denmark, and Sweden and they have Siberian overflight rights that take them to destinations
like Tokyo, Beijing, and Shanghai. SAS is therefore the only Scandinavian airline
allowed to overfly Siberia. But also in Scandinavia is Norwegian Air. As one of the largest low-cost airlines in
the world, Norwegian has pioneered long-haul budget flying mainly focusing on flights from
major European cities to the US. The airline has said, though, that it wants
to expand eastwards. They already have flights from Copenhagen,
Oslo, and Stockholm to Bangkok and from London to Singapore, but these destinations are far
enough south that they don’t involve flying over Siberia. The airline has repeatedly applied for Siberian
overflight rights and repeatedly been denied. They argue that SAS does not operate any flight
from Norway to Asia so they should be granted permission as the only Norwegian airline but,
since SAS is partially registered in Norway, Russia isn’t granting permission. Norwegian does have a subsidiary legally registered
in the UK but its unlikely that Russia would grant overflight rights to this since British
Airways and Virgin Atlantic also have overflight rights. Norwegian airlines also has a subsidiary based
in Ireland which does not have an airline with Siberian overflight rights but, SAS also
has a subsidiary based in the country which could mean that Russia will deny rights to
this subsidiary too. As of now, Russia has not granted overflight
permission to any budget airline. Others have tried—Icelandic airlines Wow
Air and Icelandair have attempted to negotiate overflight rights—but Russia views overflights
as a way to make money and wants to charge fees that would make it impossible for a low-cost
airline. For now, Wow Air has planned to start flights
from Reykjavik to Delhi, India which, in a direct routing would fly over Russia but can
route around Russia by only adding 45 minutes in extra flight time if an arrangement isn’t
made before flights start in December 2018. Russia is a powerful politically-savvy country
that knows that these overflight rights are a huge negotiation tool. Pulling the rights of a country’s airline
would be a huge financial blow and granting rights is also a huge advantage. Competition, though, is good for the consumer
and this current system stifles it. Until Russia starts granting overflight rights
to budget airlines, nonstop flights to Asia will stay expensive. The fact that this shortcut over Siberia is
now open at all, however, saves millions of passengers yearly enormous amounts of time
and money. Watching this ten-minute video of our technological
progress might make you think that we got here in one giant leap, but that, of course,
is not the case. We had to develop new navigation systems to
work around old-school compasses, build airports to help planes refuel, and extend the range
of aircraft. The problem of advancing enough to be able
to fly non-stop to the other side of the world was huge but it was broken down and approached
in small steps. Brilliant works in a similar way—breaking
a problem down, identifying the relevant concepts, thinking clearly through each part, and building
it back up to the conclusion. In this manner, super complex topics like
number theory or calculus can be easily understood by anyone. My favorite from Brilliant is their logic
course, which starts simple, but then builds up your skills so you can solve seemingly
impossible problems. To support Wendover Productions and learn
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in three weeks for another Wendover Productions video.
I feel like his comparisons of the flight times were really disingenuous. He was insinuating that the drastic reduction in flight time from London to Tokyo was due to the more direct route when in reality almost all of the reduction is from better long haul flights and fewer stopovers.
The reason it grants ONLY one airline per country the rights is pure-economics.
If there is competition for passengers on the particular routes, then the airlines will refuse to pay high overflight right charges ($100 per passenger in a round trip).
Pure economics.
This restriction gives the airlines hugh pricing power, they might charge the passengers $200 extra and pay $100 to russia, pocketing the $100 difference for nothing (but keeping a monopoly).
Interesting, I'd never thought of this before. Honestly, I'd be willing to pay extra and take hours longer just to go around Russia. The idea of ever finding myself in the country is nightmarish and even flying non-stop over it would make me really uncomfortable. I know it's irrational because it's so safe but I would go to lengths to never ever cross that border
SpaceX BFR to the rescue! Flights anywhere on Earth in less than an hour.
https://youtu.be/zqE-ultsWt0