Sunday night’s Aeroflot 124 Moscow – New York flight turned around midflight. The U.S. hasn’t banned Russian aircraft from its airspace, but it’s tough for them to get here without overflying EU and Canadian airspace. They flew 8 hours and wound up where they started.
At the same time Aeroflot 111 from Miami to Moscow made it to its destination, violating airspace restrictions. They’re accused of lying claiming that this was a humanitarian flight, rather than a standard commercial flight.
A spokesperson for Canada's transport ministers says Aeroflot 111 shouldn't have been allowed to pass through its airspace. "This evening, NAV Canada mistakenly permitted a banned aircraft into Canadian airspace. This shouldn’t have happened."
— Aly Sider (@alyrose) February 28, 2022
(2/2) We are launching a review of the conduct of Aeroflot and the independent air navigation service provider, NAVCAN, leading up to this violation. We will not hesitate to take appropriate enforcement action and other measures to prevent future violations.
— Transport Canada (@Transport_gc) February 28, 2022
Under EU sanctions leased aircraft must be recalled from Russian airlines. The planes can’t be insured, and parts can’t be supplied. This represents more than half of all aircraft in Russia. Plus, with SWIFT connectivity blocked for major Russian banks, it would be difficult to make March lease payment sin any case. Aeroflot’s low cost carrier Pobeda has already had a Boeing 737 reposessed in Ireland.
Sure, Russian airlines could take a ‘come and get it’ approach to the planes but if Russian carriers want to lease planes in the future, they’ll need to comply.
Meanwhile here’s an interesting thread on why Russia is underperforming expectations, and Ukraine outperforming, and an argument that Ukraine just needs to hold on to ‘win’ (even, by the way, if Kiev falls). This seems slightly more optimistic than warranted, though its underlying arguments describing what’s happened to far and why may be correct.
Why Russia will lose this war?
Much of the "realist" discourse is about accepting Putin's victory, cuz it's *guaranteed*. But how do we know it is?
I'll argue that analysts 1) overrate Russian army 2) underrate Ukrainian one 3) misunderstand Russian strategy & political goals🧵 pic.twitter.com/pXpfIcq3Zs
— Kamil Galeev (@kamilkazani) February 27, 2022
I wonder if they will return the vast majority of the planes. With Europe and big swaths of N/A shut out and potentially more restrictions on where they can fly on the way, is there even a reason to have this huge portion of the fleet?
They’re in a damned if you do, damned if you don’t scenario. If they return them, it will take time to rebuild the fleet if/when the sanctions are lifted as these planes will likely be re-leased to other carriers. If they don’t return them, a huge chunk will just sit on the ground until (if/when) the sanctions are lifted while also having to avoid having ANY aircraft they own seized the second they land at an airport outside of Russia or a neutral country when there is a judgement to collect.
Depending on how you feel, you may want to change the spelling of Kiyev to Kyiv, which is the spelling used by Ukraine.
How the spelling of Ukraine’s capital would be at the bottom of any lists of concerns regarding the current situation. Delta has dropped Aeroflot’s codesharing. It would be fine with many if they just dropped them from SkyTeam all together. It would be fine with many that the United States ban Aeroflot from any codesharing agreements with US flag carriers. Why hasn’t the FAA banned them from overflying US airspace? Maybe it’s that President Paw Paw can’t make up his mind (or what’s left of it) or just scared to do it. After all, Putin isn’t afraid of the US at all.
@Win, agreed, I don’t understand why the US hasn’t banned them. Sure, it may be largely moot with the other jurisdictions’ airspace bans, but it’s a simple step that has no downside. We have an incompetent dementia patient at the helm and it’s amateur hour when it comes to his handlers.
Kiev is the proper English spelling of this city’s name.
Other spellings are offshoots of botched translations from the Ukrainian language, which does not use the Latin-based 26-letter English alphabet.
As a SkyTeam member, passengers might consider crediting their Aeroflot-marketed flights to Delta Airlines so they can receive valuable those highly valuable Delta SkyMiles and Medallion Qualification Miles. According to SkyTeam, they are the leading alliance for frequent flyers.
As a SkyTeam member, passengers might consider crediting their Aeroflot-marketed flights to Delta Airlines so they can receive those highly valuable Delta SkyMiles and Medallion Qualification Miles. According to SkyTeam, SkyTeam is the leading alliance for frequent flyers.
@Ken A: that is some high-quality sarcasm!
“They’re accused of lying claiming that this was a humanitarian flight, rather than a standard commercial flight.”
“Lying”? Oh, you mean they’re operating equivalent to government officials, including those in the U.S.
James M, I didn’t realize you were the arbiter of how someone else wants their name spelled. But hey, I’m sure the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Fox News, the US Department of State, the US Board of Geographic Names, and presumably significant to this board, the IATA and ICAO are probably wrong. Happens some times.
Other than that, how’s your trip to Peking coming?
@Win and Ryan. The administration is trying to get as many Americans out of Russia before implementing the ban and essentially forcing them into few options other than ground travel to get out. There are a LOT of Americans trying to leave right now.
Hmmm. AA could use some widebodies for the summer. Wonder if there’s anything new on the lot? Or are they going to need to send in the repo men?
James M (and Gary, who persists):
You are factually incorrect regarding the proper English rendering and transliteration of the capital city of Ukraine. Please consult official government sources or reputable independent style guides for confirmation. To repeat from yesterday:
Words matter. Defiantly continuing to use the Russian transliteration of Ukraine’s capital, just because that was prevalent while the city and country were under Soviet domination during your childhood, instead of the Ukrainian transliteration adopted by the Ukrainian government, the U.S. government, and most international bodies and press organizations is to adopt Putin’s rhetoric of the indistinguishability and indivisibility of the Russian and Ukrainian people (https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/putins-new-ukraine-essay-reflects-imperial-ambitions/) and the illegitimacy of the Ukrainian state as an artificial construct of the Soviet Union (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/02/23/fact-checking-putins-speech-ukraine/).
Using the Ukrainian transliteration is not “revisionist” as you claim, it is correctly rendering the monosyllabic Ukrainian word Київ as written in the Ukrainian language into English (or the Latin alphabet), rather than transliterating the Russian word Киев and pronouncing it with two syllables. Likewise, the largest city in Kazakhstan is Almaty, not the Russian Alma-Ata. There are many other examples of changes of city names since 1991 from Soviet names to names in the local language, which are then rendered into English.
I do give you credit for dropping the word “the” before “Ukraine,” which also was prevalent during the Soviet era, but no longer is commonly used because it also connotes that Ukraine is nothing more than a region of Russia, like the steppe or the Far East. This does, however, undermine your argument about the immutability of geographic names learned in childhood.
I also note this is not a case in which there is a common English name for the city. In English we say Belgrade, Serbia and Athens, Greece instead of transliterating the local language names for these cities and countries. Likewise, we say Vienna, Austria (not Wien, Österreich) and Munich, Bavaria, Germany (not München, Bayern, Deutschland) and the successor state to the Ottoman Empire in English is the Republic of Turkey (short form Turkey), not Türkiye Cumhuriyeti or Türkiye—yet. In English, we do say Istanbul (not Constantinople) and why they changed it I can’t say, but it’s nobody’s business but the Turks.
I realize you have little regard for the U.S. State Department (still think tourism to Lviv would be just fine? https://viewfromthewing.com/ukraine-launches-new-tourism-campaign-as-it-prepares-for-invasion-by-russia-keep-calm-and-visit/ ), but it has used Kyiv for the U.S. Embassy in the Ukrainian capital since 2006. In 2019, the U.S. Board on Geographic Names determined that Kyiv is the only acceptable name for U.S. government use (https://geonames.nga.mil/gns/html/PDFDocs/BGNStatement_Kyiv.pdf).
Putin’s version of history, culture, and language is what is “revisionist.” Don’t promote and disseminate Russian disinformation.
So it’s safe to assume now that Putin is neither smart nor savvy, in his decision to invade Ukraine, destroy a fledgling democracy, create a refugee crisis in greater Europe, bring an economic catastrophe down on his own people, and turn himself into a pariah while elevating Zelensky into a worldwide hero ?
James M says:
February 28, 2022 at 7:05 am
Kiev is the proper English spelling of this city’s name.
Other spellings are offshoots of botched translations from the Ukrainian language, which does not use the Latin-based 26-letter English alphabet.
The proper spelling IS Kyiv, not the one previously used by Russia when they were in charge. If you respect the sovereignty of Ukraine, you call it Kyiv, or do you still call Beijing, Peking?
@James N
Ok, lying. You do mean the over 30,000 lies that Chump told during his limited time in office? There are people who have proof of that. Consider my neighbor’s mother who has kept a scrapbook of Chump’s lies. I wonder if she is continuing with another scrapbook of his out of office lies, like the one he just lied about him being responsible for keeping the U.S. in NATO. During his first meeting with the Joint Chiefs he called them “cowards” for not getting the U.S. out of NATO. Such a great lying man is “Chump.” “Let’s go Chump”, “Let’s go Chump”, “Let’s go Chump.” Come on now Jimmy boy, let me hear ya, “LET’S GO CHUMP.”
As noted above, place names have changed a lot recently, and this seems to be due more to fashion and what used to be called political correctness than anything else. You can still order Peking Duck in a restaurant, it’s not Beijing Duck. No one in the English speaking world refers to Wein, Firenze, Roma, Moskva, Deutschland, Nederland, Sverige, or Nippon, even those are all the local names for those places. Good luck telling me the “real” name of Belgium, since I don’t even think the Belgians can decide. The French call London “Londres”, and we all mispronounced Paris. I believe the Vietnamese all locally refer to Ho Chi Minh City as “Saigon”, al least when the local officials aren’t around. If you get right down to it, when local authoritarians change names, we should just keep the name on not be lead around by the nose. Cambodia, not Kampuchea. Burma, not Myanmar. Chemnitz, not the truly awful Karl-Marx-Stadt, which has fortunately gone away. And Czechia is just clunky in English, even though the Czech Republic is a perfectly nice country. And who remembers the hilarious attempts at getting everyone to pronounce Qatar “correctly’, until the Qataris realized it sounded like “gutter” in English and they were better off with the mispronounced “Ka-tar”
If the Ukrainians want to rename them Kyiv and Kharkiv, they’ve earned that right, even though as a student of history, I know them as Kiev and Kharkov. And the sieges of Leningrad and Stalingrad took place in what is now St Petersburg and Volgograd.
Russia will get the last laugh in the end. They hold all the card and nukes.
@sitroomlarry
Russias version of history is the correct one. Russia created the ukraine as it is today.
@KoggerJ, even if Russia had all the nukes (which they don’t), if they choose to use them, no one will be laughing and everyone will be dead in the weeks thereafter as nuclear winter sets in. Putin may be an unfeeling narcissist, but I sincerely hope his heightened alert order is saber rattling and that he knows better than to use them.
For all those scholars above who are extolling the classic virtues of proper English grammar and pronunciation; feel free to explain where “can I get”, (in real English can-I-get is about as curt as it “gets”), “Mozz-cow”, “Cumbre Vi-A-ger” (La Palma”), “war commenced Tuesday”, not “on Tuesday”, “takeout” rather than “take-away”, “London rather than Lundon”. And so it goes on. I won’t even get into how you deal with Spanish! Get over it America!
@KoggerJ – Yes, but Kyiv created Russia, so it’s really Ukraine that can claim Russia is not a “real” country, it belongs to them. See Kievan Rus.
What happened to the Hyatt story from yesterday that went into some details about how Hyatt pays hotels for award nights, upgrades and some other program benefits?
Did Hyatt get someone to ask you to take it down? Did they maybe offer you something — other than a threat to take it to court — in exchange for you making it disappear?
@GUWonder I was not offered anything to take it down. I removed it while I consider whether there was too much specific detail on some matters.
@James M: You say, “or do you still call Beijing, Peking?”
When I tried to order “Beijing Duck” at a Chinese restaurant, only “Peking Duck” was on the menu.
@Gary Interesting. Seems like an attorney from Hyatt contacted you? Ya know, trying to read between the lines.
No, I did not hear from Hyatt legal
@Rog…Oh, look, I have my own personal troll and an ignorant one, at that.
So, how should wevpronounce the i with the dots over it? The other three letters are cyrillic, with the second letter pronounced as a long “e” sound.
Any website that allows these low IQ commenters to make R and D insulting comments instead of talking about the subject at hand, having intellectual discussion is an airplane/travel site I don’t want to be a part of. It’s like a lazy parent who shows no discipline and shrugs when the kids are embarrassing in public. Then, they find themselves lonely with no friends or visitors because they’re kids are awful. Enjoy the bad children. It’s sad.
I wonder how much losses will endure all the companies in EU and USA by losing the trade partner Russia ? Specialy EU. Russia is the biggest trade partner for each country in EU. I wonder if it worth to create so much propaganda and to start such information war and then lose thir own profits or Russian oil or gas ? Russia became very strong after the 1992 fall of USSR. Seems it bothers EU and USA that any country might be strong or even stronger then them. China is on its way to be stronger. Putin is extremely smart man and he knows what he is doing. Russia went through worse crisises and got out even stronger. It will happen again . Aircrafts and multimillion leases will be lost for EU . They would not be able to find another carriers needed that much. As well Lufthansa, British airlines, KLM etc will also lose billions of dollars in revenue by not flying to Russia. It was their major source of revenue and major European destination. I wonder whe the inflation will hit EU and how much worse inflation will he in USA soon becaue of their sanctions against Russia?
Extremely disappointed to see all this energy expended on the pronunciation of Kiev , Kharkov etc. looks like Kiev could fall soon. I would have preferred to see suggestions as to how the west can help the Ukraine people survive the Russian invasion.
Shut all of their flights down…keep them out of our airspace…quit buying anything from them and sell them nothing…