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Until the 1990s, planes from Western Europe and North America used to avoid Chinese and Eastern European air space. This was known as the Polar route. I was wondering what the implications would be if airliners began using this air routes again (combined, in the case of Western European airliners) with using the routes via the Middle East. Would it work today ? And how long would trips be ? Would they be much more expensive ?
This is a 1969 example of one such flight on the London-Tokyo route via Anchorage. Today these flights can be carried out without an intermediate stop as ranges have improved:
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