Polar Route - The Arctic

The Arctic

The American Federal Aviation Administration defines the North Polar area of operations as the area lying north of 78 deg north latitude, which is entirely north of Alaska and most of Siberia. The term "polar route" was originally more general, being applied to great circle routes between Europe and the west coast of North America in the 1950s. During much of the Cold War the Arctic region was a buffer zone between the Soviet Union and North America; civilian flights from Europe to the Asian Far East were unable to cross the Soviet Union or China and had to use a Middle East route or connect through Alaska across the Arctic region. These Cold War tracks extended from the northern Alaskan coast across Greenland to Europe. Korean Air Lines Flight 902 was shot down in the USSR in 1978 after the crew made gross navigational errors attempting to fly the assigned polar route.

Routine transpolar flight deep into the Arctic became possible only after the end of the Cold War, when the United States and Russia became less concerned about the possibility of a trans-polar attack. Aircraft such as the Boeing 747-400 and the Airbus A340, with ranges of around 7,000 nautical miles (13,000 km), were also required to handle the distances between suitable airports. Before this era, all flights from North America to Asia were routed around the Communist bloc using a series of tracks between Alaska and Japan.

The main obstacle to flights across Russia was the inadequate Russian air traffic control system and a lack of English communication. To solve these issues RACGAT (Russian-American Coordinating Group for Air Traffic) was formed in 1993. By summer 1998 the Russian government gave permission to open four cross-polar routes, named Polar 1, 2, 3 and 4. Cathay Pacific flew the first polar flight into Siberia in July 1998.

Polar routes are now in common use by airlines connecting Asian cities such as Bangkok, Beijing, Dubai, Hong Kong, New Delhi, Seoul, Singapore, and Tokyo to North American destinations such as New York, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Toronto, Vancouver and Washington.