The last time I have experienced such a massive closure of airspace for civilians was in the days after September 11th 2001. Two days later, I flew to Buenos Aires and it started with an evacuation of Hannover Airport triggered by a bomb threat. Finally, we arrived well in Argentina, where the country was in a severe economic depression and surging inflation driven by the pegging of the Argentinian Peso to the USD. Later, in December that year, Argentina busted into riots, and Argentina declared state bankruptcy. In all of this, we had a car factory, with ambitious targets of the newly appointed company president for Argentina, Viktor Klima. Viktor gained experience as a politician before, being the Chancellor of Austria from 1997 to 2000. It took me a while back then, to understand that actually, a former politician can achieve more in this environment than a bunch of restructuring managers.
Back then, there were no cool internet tools to map the airspace, so I literally drew up my maps on the back of an envelope, continuing travel to Brasil, Mexico and finally the US.
Today, it’s a few clicks on the web browser to see a huge hole in the sky over Ukraine and parts of South-West Russia. Personally, I was surprised to wake up to the news, that Russia actually did launch a “special operation” last night, claiming to take out Ukrainian military infrastructure. Russian friends told me, that this clearing of the airspace and rerouting of civil flights started visibly at one in the morning and this hole took shape at around 3 a.m. This morning at shorty after 9:00 Russian media reported that the Ukrainian air defence is largely destroyed. Who knows, what’s true. But given that airspace interference started visibly to the public, just after midnight, I can’t quite understand why Western Media acted so surprised in the morning. Not paying attention? Making a drama? Well, it’s dramatic enough, if you ask me.
Source: www.planefinder.net (accessed on 24.02.2022 at 12:50 GMT+1)