A Russian aircraft flew 9 hours between Moscow & Switzerland in rare routing that added 6 hours to flight time

Sanctions against Russia are still forcing aircraft to take long, creative routings around closed airspace.

On Wednesday, a Russian government aircraft flew nine hours between Moscow and Basel, Switzerland — a trip that takes about three hours without airspace restrictions, according to a Twitter post from the flight-tracking website Flightradar24.

The Russian-built Ilyushin Il-96-300 aircraft, which is used to fly government officials and the president, according to the Swiss news outlet BZ, took off from Moscow at 10:27 a.m. and landed in Basel at 6:39 p.m. local time. That’s 7:39 p.m. Moscow time.

The plane flew over Russia, Georgia, and Turkey before going south over the Mediterranean Sea, avoiding Eastern European airspace. The jet then flew along the African coast before traveling north across Tunisia and finally traversing over France and Switzerland.

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Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine in February, France and Switzerland closed their airspace to Russian aircraft as part of sanctions imposed to punish President Vladimir Putin.

According to Flightradar24, the French and Swiss governments gave the plane special permission to fly over their airspace.

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