If you look at the Flightradar24 online radar map, you can see four black holes – places where civilian aircraft do not fly. There is one such location in Europe, two in Asia, and one in Africa.
In Europe, civilian aircraft do not fly over Ukraine and parts of Russia. This is due to Russia’s war in Ukraine, which began on February 24, 2022.
However, even up to this point, air traffic over Ukraine has been significantly lower than in 2013. The Donetsk and Luhansk regions were completely closed to civilian aircraft after a Malaysia Airlines passenger Boeing 777 was shot down in the sky over Donetsk in 2014.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has created a second black hole for airplanes on the map – in eastern Russia. There are sparsely populated areas here, and the main traffic in this region was generated by transit flights of foreign airlines.
Mutual sanctions between Russia and the West have resulted in foreign carriers now flying over Siberia via the North Pole or Central Asia.
Airplanes do not fly over Tibet in Asia for geographical reasons. According to Flightradar24, in the event of a cabin depressurization, the aircraft needs to descend to an altitude of less than 10,000 feet (3,000 meters). At this altitude, people on the plane will be able to breathe without oxygen masks.
The problem in Tibet is that a large part of the country is above 10,000 feet, so if necessary, aircraft cannot descend to the required altitude and are therefore forced to fly over these mountainous areas.
In Africa, planes are flying over the territory of Sudan. In April 2023, a confrontation between special forces and the local army began here. It resulted in the complete burning down of several passenger planes at the parking lots at Khartoum’s capital airport, including SkyUp and Saudia aircraft. As a precautionary measure, airlines began flying over the conflict zone.
