Can someone post a FP for ACA051 and ACA052? Equipment is an A340-300. This flight just started up October 18th and flight tracking for the first two days indicated flight eastbound initially via a NAT routing (or just north of), rather than a much more northern route closer to the great circle track. Any restrictions to flight over Pakistan or Afghanistan presently that might impact a desired route?Thanks,Chris Brew

I discovered part of the reason for the routings being well south of the Great Circle route. Russia has been denying Air Canada permission to overfly their airspace on these flights. This could turn into a battle that Russia will definitely lose if Canada retaliates by denying AFL overflight of Canadian airspace. The following article has the details:http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2003/10/21/044.html

Hi Chris,I managed to get the first part of the real world flightplan from last weekend, which shows that the route indeed is via the North Atlantic:ACA051 CYYZ-VIDP A343/H DOF/031018.... YYZ079 .. J594 MSS DCT MIILS DCT DOTTY DCT 53N050W 55N040W 55N030W 55N020W DCT MASIT UN546 DEVOL UL975 WAL ...As you said, they may not fly through Russian airspace (for now at least) and therefore they're flying via northern England, The Netherlands, Germany etc. over northern Turkey to India.I know that there are a few more operators with the same problem. For example, Northwest flies Amsterdam-Bombay via Turkey also because they don't have permission to enter Russian airspace. If they could, the route would be considerably shorter. :)Regards,http://home.planet.nl/~duijn181/cu2/koen.jpg