How global conflict is changing air travel
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 26 January 2026
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
One of the world’s largest airline groups has told Business Daily that airspace closures, due to war zones, are now forcing substantial rerouting of flights.
Lufthansa says the ban on using Russian and Ukrainian airspace is having a measurable cost impact on its long haul network, with typical detours of one to two hours.
A recent Conflict Intensity index report shows that areas affected by armed fighting have grown by 89% over the past five years, that is one and a half times the size of the European Union.
We examine the cost to consumers, and the environmental impacts of these changes.
If you'd like to get in touch with the team, our email address is businessdaily@bbc.co.uk
Producer/presenter: Rick Kelsey
(Photo: Planes landing and taking off against a coloured sky. Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:08.6 | Hello and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:12.0 | I'm Rick Kelsey. |
| 0:12.8 | Today, the amount of airspace available to fly in is shrinking. |
| 0:18.1 | Each additional minute of flight time |
| 0:20.3 | lead to an average fee increase of around |
| 0:22.9 | 1.5 US dollars. Wow. Conflict has changed flight routes both in time and cost. You know, |
| 0:30.6 | you're typically wanting to turn around an international aircraft in three hours for a long-haul |
| 0:35.5 | flight. If you had a flight scheduled for 6 a.m. |
| 0:38.1 | And that plane can't get back until 8 or 9 a.m. now, what do you do? |
| 0:42.2 | And that gets into some of the supply chain issues airlines have dealt with. |
| 0:45.8 | It's also impacting the environment and how we travel the planet. |
| 0:49.9 | There are political ripple effects beyond the conflict zones themselves, |
| 0:54.1 | whether that's Russian aircraft not allowed to fly through EU airspace, for example, as a result of Western sanctions. |
| 1:00.9 | We'll speak with the pilots stealing with the new flight paths and look at the effect on airlines and passengers. |
| 1:07.2 | That's exactly what happens. The cost gets passed on. I mean, aviation has always been a business on the edge financially. |
| 1:15.5 | How conflict is changing our skies, all coming up in today's Business Daily. |
| 1:25.1 | I'm starting the show at the top of the world. |
| 1:28.3 | I'm flying over the North Pole. |
| 1:30.3 | The ground speed is 589 miles per hour. |
| 1:34.3 | The altitude is 33,000 feet. |
| 1:37.3 | And looking out of the window, I can just see drifting sea ice and clear skies well into the distance. It's mesmeric. The flight is |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.