US bans Russian flights from their airspace

US President Joe Biden announced tonight in the state of the Union that the US would be joining its allies in banning Russian aircraft from US airspace.

The banning will take effect by end of day Wednesday, the U.S. D.O.T. and F.A.A. announced Tuesday evening.

This ban means that any aircraft owned, operated, certified, registered, chartered, leased or controlled by, for, or for the benefit of a person who is a citizen of Russia will be prohibited from flying over U.S. airspace. Though it is worth noting this only applies to scheduled or charter passenger and cargo flights, this means that Russian private flights are still able to fly into or over U.S. airspace.

With this ban the U.S. joins its European and Canadian allies in banning Russian flights from their airspace, in turn it is expected Russia will now do the same for U.S. aircraft.

Some foreign governments had questioned why the U.S. did not move faster to ban Russian flights from their airspace, there is no official answer but it is thought that the government was giving U.S. citizens residing in Russia time to return to the U.S., another factor could be that a majority of the air traffic flying from the U.S. to Asia flies over Russian airspace. This would affect both passenger flights and cargo flights, and could’ve affected supply chain issues. But seen as airlines have stopped flying over Russia anyways not wanting to risk the downing of a flight, the U.S. has no reason left to keep its airspace available to the Russians.