Navigating International and Restricted Airspace and Charts for Military Airports

SimBrief General
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Hi,

I’m really enjoying these charts—they’re incredibly insightful! They’ve deepened my understanding of airports, taxi procedures, and both departure and arrival processes. I’m amazed at the level of detail and complexity involved. With each flight, I’m growing more confident in my flying skills and adherence to procedures!

I do have a few questions:

Determining International Airspace:

How can I determine if I am in international airspace? I used to think that being in an FIR (Flight Information Region) meant I was in that country’s airspace. For example, if I am in Ankara FIR, I would be in Turkish airspace. However, I came across the UNCLOS (United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea) stating, “Each coastal State may claim a territorial sea that extends seaward up to 12 nautical miles (nm) from its baselines.” Whenever I fly in geopolitically sensitive areas, it’s crucial for me to avoid certain countries due to obvious reasons.

I find it impractical to entirely avoid their FIRs. To figure out if I am in international airspace, I use tools like the World Map with the “SATELLITE (Modified)” view, which shows IFR maps and country borders.

For example, in Yemen, the white dotted line beyond the coast represents a boundary. If I stay past this line, am I considered to be in international airspace, or should I avoid the entire Sanaa FIR? I’ve observed many commercial flights (Emirates, Ethiopian, Fly Dubai, etc.) entering the Sanaa FIR.

YemenSANAFIR
YemenSANAFIR1920×1127 155 KB

Visualizing Boundaries from NOTAMS:

Is there a way to visualize boundaries issued in NOTAMs? When reading a flight plan from Simbrief, I often see coordinates for temporary restricted areas, such as for high-altitude balloons, construction, UAV activity, etc… Is there a feature in Navigraph that allows me to input these coordinates to get an exact visualization?

Restricted and Prohibited Airspace:

I find it challenging to navigate restricted and prohibited airspaces, particularly in Europe and other regions. In places like Canada and the US, it seems straightforward, as flight plans from SimBrief generally avoid these areas. However, sometimes flying from point A to B necessitates passing through restricted or prohibited airspace. For instance, here’s a flight plan from Dubai (OMDB) to Tokyo (RJAA) which goes over some prohibited and restricted airspaces in Pakistan.

DAVM4G DAVMO M318 KHM A453 ZDN G452 KALAT G325 PURPA W112 TUSLI W187 IBANO B215 NUKTI W66 DKO W69 HUR B339 LADIX W34 VAPGU W100 ORAVA W201 UNSEK A326 DONVO G597 AGAVO Y644 EGOBA G597 LANAT Y51 SAMON Y517 ESKAS Y303 ENTAK Y30 SWAMP SWAMPT

For instance “P249D: GND - UNLTD” on G325 airway between waypoint PARLO and ZB. Another one is “P249B: GND - UNLTD” a bit above also in the Lahore FIR.

Likewise in Italy (D35C): FL280- FL660. and nearby restricted zones.

Is it acceptable to fly through these restricted and prohibited airways, especially when commercial flights frequently do so?

Incomplete Data for Military Airports:

I’ve noticed that some military airports have incomplete or non-existent data. For example, while Sakhir AB (OBKH) in Bahrain has comprehensive charts, Isa AB (OBBS) only has one arrival chart, with no SIDs. Similarly, there are no charts for Al Dhafra Air Base or Minhad AB, although freeware sceneries are available.

It’s understandable that not all countries release charts for sensitive military bases (based on the FAQ). Yet, comprehensive charts are available for other airbases in the region, such as al Udeid AB (OTBH), Camp Buehring/Udairi (OKDI), and Prince Sultan AB (OEPS).

If charts cannot be made available, I guess the only choice I’d have is to ask the ATC to vector me for a visual approach.

I would greatly appreciate any guidance you can provide on these!

Thank you.
Yaj.

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Hi,

I’d like to follow-up on this topic.

Thanks!
Yaj.

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Hi, sorry for the delay. I don’t know the answers to many of your questions, but I will do my best to give some insights:

  • Determining International Airspace: The FIR boundaries do not always correspond exactly to the country boundaries. I do not know the specifics of how airlines avoid certain areas, but I imagine it is often easiest to just avoid the FIR entirely. In many cases this is a manual process done by the dispatcher I think.
  • Visualizing Boundaries from NOTAMS: There isn’t currently a feature to visualize NOTAM coordinates, but it is something that we are investigating down the road.
  • Restricted and Prohibited Airspace: I do not know a precise answer for this, it probably depends on the circumstances. Different airlines may also opt to fly through some areas while others may not. Perhaps one of the real-world dispatchers on here can give some insight.
  • Incomplete Data for Military Airports: We are basically limited by what data our real-world provider can give us. I imagine some airbases might be more secretive than others. It’s also possible some airports simply don’t have SID/STARs of course, these are not mandatory for an airport to have.

Best regards,

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For example, for an international US operator, if we want to avoid a country; we’ll avoid the entire FIR; like ZKPY - Pyongyang, same with all the Russian FIRs, that airspace doesn’t exist at all for us. While our flight planning system is more than happy to route me thru there, we have other tools to keep me out of airspace I have no business being in.

We also have an Overfly group, who will work with a country we might want to overfly and request official permission to do so; when/if we get it, we may get an overfly code we file if they require it in the ATC FPL; like as an example YEMEN ABC1234 in RMK/. Some countries are easy to work with, and others less so; and others we just avoid if possible as getting official permission is hit or miss at best. We also use 3rd party companies who might work well with a given country, when us trying go to thru the front door is less than successful.

Also, in international airspace, we don’t optimize overland at all (except in Eurocontrol, as long as I see NO ERRORS I don’t really care how I am getting there day-to-day); our Airnav and Overfly work tightly together, so for example from Europe to Singapore, we might have just a couple of airnav-validated routes that comply with any published standard routing rules; nothing random and nothing optimized. If I have a few legal routes, we still compare all of them. We still check on day of dispatch that there are no closed segments at altitude (flying thru an active free-fire area is bad for all involved) and that Eurocontrol is happy with the routing that day.

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As a dispatcher-student myself I’m going to give some insight as best as I can.
The international airspace rule is just like the international waters: 12nm from the sea coast (or the outermost capes in a certain geographic area of the country). Between land borders, the limits are the FIR boundaries. It’s one of the first subjects taught in the first class of Air Law at ICAO/EASA Dispatch or ATPL courses. I can also give a very current example of this, which actually was brought up in my class when we talked about international/national airspace boundaries: with the Ukrainian war, most EU countries banned Russian flights through their airspace, however it’s perfectly possible (and is actually operated quite often if not daily) for a Russian aircraft to fly between mainland Russia and the Kaliningrad enclave. Going through Saint Petersburg into/from the Baltic sea, there’s a sea portion divided between Finland and Estonia FIRs, however, since it’s beyond the 12nm limit, it has a portion of international airspace. Between mainland Russia and Kaliningrad there are the Finnish, Estonian, Lithuanian and Latvian FIRs, as well as the Swedish FUR a bit further West, however, being bigger than the 12nm limits it’s perfectly possible to fly inside those FIRs while still be in international airspace.
Also it’s perfectly feasible for a Russian operator to fly from Russia to Cuba and some Central America countries that allows them to fly there using Scandinavian FIRs, as well as Portugal’s Santa Maria FIR and any other FIRs that include international waters/airspaces.

As dougsnow said…

An operator can simply avoid the entire FIR, but it’s at operator’s discretion if it wants to avoid the entire FIR or only the country’s airspace.

This is actually very good news to read since it’s very useful!

Not all restricted/dangerous airspaces are active 24/7 or permanently. Under one country/FIR NOTAMs there is the information on when the restrictions apply (MON-WED and FRI 0700-1100, THU 1400-1600 as a totally random example). It’s quite common to have some permanently defined areas that may be activated or deactivated according to “one’s” needs (always with previously published/NOTAMed schedules). Military training exercises for example, or airshows and such. This is the reason why it’s so dangerous to fly over N. Korea or near its borders: they don’t ever publish any NOTAMs stating that on a given day there will be a military exercise either over their territory or their seas/FIR and their missile launches, being previously unannounced and unknown where they will take place and where they will fall, it’s a hight risk not only over their FIR as well as the first several miles into neighbouring FIRs (in Japan as well as S. Korea there’s always active NOTAMs stating the risk of flying in their FIR near the boundary with the N. Korean FIR).
One of the features PFPX had which I quite miss is exactly this: when clicking on a restricted/dangerous area, it immediately showed the scheduled activation periods of that area. Rota in Southern Spain and Monte Real in my country Portugal are good examples: although they have permanently defined areas, it’s perfectly safe and legal to fly through there. And either way, in real life although being active at a given time, one can always ask the ATC if you ne is allowed to cross the area. Of course when planning the flight the pilot or dispatcher will account as if it is not allowed to fly there if it is active, but when flying, especially as a private pilot/flight you can always ask if you can shortcut through there and spare some fuel. The negative answer is always certain, the positive is a bonus.
Cheers!

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Thanks for your response!

I actually see quite a lot of flights from mainland Russia to Kaliningrad flying over the Baltic Sea on FR24. I checked out the route on SimBrief, and it’s quite interesting that flights are still possible given the aircraft ban. So, if an aircraft is flying in international airspace but within an FIR during an IFR flight, should it still make contact with ATC?

I used to “panic” whenever I saw restricted airspace, thinking I needed to avoid it at all costs. But that isn’t always practical. It would be great if Navigraph had a feature that could pull up NOTAMs for a given flight and map out the boundaries and times during which they are active. This would make it much easier for us pilots, instead of having to use GIS, Google Earth, or other software to figure out those boundaries.

Thanks again!

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Yes! Of course! Since you are inside the FIR and in controlled airspace. ATC service is provided, but you must avoid entering that country’s airspace.

It would be quite useful indeed! There are however a few websites where one can check for dangerous flying zones around the globe. There are other areas that although not restricted in any way, are considered by other countries as unsafe (war and conflict zones for instance). Safe Airspace is one of such websites and the one I use myself when planning on Simbrief.
Many airlines, especially European ones, use EASA’s official Conflict Zone Information Bulletin. Most info on both sites is the same, but I prefer Safe Airspace myself. All this to say that many airlines use 3rd party websites for gathering such information as opposed to having such info clearly visible on their planning map.

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