Announcement! For Safety Reasons, JAL And ANA Airlines Cancel All Flights To Europe

Illustration of ANA Airlines (Photo by Fasyah Halim on Unsplash)

JAKARTA - Japan Airlines Co Ltd (9201.T) and ANA Holdings Inc (9202.T) will immediately cancel all flights, to and from Europe starting Thursday, March 3 for security reasons following Russia's imminent invasion of Ukraine.

JAL and ANA usually use Russian airspace for their European flights. This means that these two airlines have joined the many airlines that have canceled or rerouted flights between Europe and northern Asia after the crisis.

"We are continuing to monitor the situation, but given the current situation in Ukraine and the different risks, we have decided to cancel the flight", a JAL spokesman told Reuters.

The ANA Cargo website said the flight was suspended because it was unable to fly over Russia due to the current situation in Ukraine.

Airlines from the European Union and Canada have been banned from Russian airspace in response to their restrictions on Russian airlines.

ANA and JAL operate approximately 60 flights per week through Russian airspace between Tokyo and London, Paris, Frankfurt and Helsinki.

Korean Air Lines (003490.KS) was still flying over Russian airspace on Thursday, according to Reuters monitoring from FlightRadar24, but the Taiwanese carrier is now avoiding Russian airspace and flying over China and Central Asia.

ANA said it would also cancel eight flights to and from London, Paris and Frankfurt on Friday.