I regularly fly the China-USA route over the Pacific. Most of the time the planes I’m on fly from Shanghai to Tokyo and then start the ocean crossing from there. But depending on wind and weather planes sometimes take a different route, for example when flying from New York you sometimes fly straight North over Canada to the North Pole, and from there to Siberia. Nice views in summer if you have a window seat!
Today I was on a plane from San Francisco to Shanghai and I wasn’t really paying attention to the route we were flying. I noticed at the start that we took a Northern route over Alaska, but did not look on the in-flight screen until an hour before landing. And then I noticed that we had just flown over North Korea! I had no idea that planes are allowed to fly over the DPRK – let alone US planes (I was on a United Airlines flight). Is this route something new? Or did I just never notice it before?
I am a Dutch entrepreneur in Shanghai who has lived and worked over 12 years in China. Co-founder of among others Tudou.com and unitedstyles.com, advisor to Spil Games for which I set up and led the Asian operation (2006-2011), and angel investor in Chinese Internet and tech start-ups. Married to Grace, with whom I have a son (Scott) and a daughter (Elaine). These are my personal views and do not necessarily represent the companies I am involved with. You can reach me at marcvanderchijs (at) gmail (dot) com
5 Responses to “Since when do US airlines fly over North Korea?”
I had the same thing while flying from Schiphol to Helsinki and then Osaka, but I watched the screen a couple of times during flight. I guess there are two things in play here:
1) The red line doesn’t show the actual flight, but just the relative position of the airplane with respect to the airport where the plane departed.
2) The map is flat, so if e.g. you fly over the North Pole, the red line will not show you that after the plane has already left the North Pole.
Nils, in the close up screen you could see that the flight really flew over N-Korea. I only took pictures of the screen after we left N-Korean air space, but you can still see it in the top picture in the post.
Spy mission? Or the USA promised N.Korea something in exchange for which they are allowed to fly over N.Korean airspace. However, it still seems odd. I can still remenber the Korean Air jet that was shot down over Russia. Maybe they just wanted to test the N.Korean air defense system. If that’s the case that is really scary.
There’s been international flights over North Korean airspace for years. Its a source of revenue for the Government and saves airlines on costly diversions. But occasionally the DPRK suspends the route tot South Korean airlines. IATA doesn’t have any directive at present to avoid DPRK airspace.
@Mark, ah I guess that my flight just for some reason (maybe what Chris says) flew to around Beijing and then a bit south before going through South Korea.