The advantage of the North Pole as a shortcut for intercontinental air transportation is evident, but technical and geopolitical issues prevented the full usage of polar routes for commercial transportation until the 1990s. The airspace of Eastern Bloc countries such as the Soviet Union and China was restricted, forcing airlines to take longer routes. Aircraft range was also more limited, which often required a technical refueling stop for long-distance hauls. A flight from London to Tokyo would need to transit through Anchorage or a circuitous route through Dubai and Hong Kong. Flights from New York and Los Angeles to Tokyo also required a stop at Anchorage.
With the introduction of long-range aircraft such as the Boeing 747-200 and 777 and the Airbus A340, which have ranges exceeding 13,000 km, nonstop transpolar flights became possible. However, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s marked the geopolitical possibility of using the Arctic as an intercontinental air route. After initial testing and the approval of designated polar routes (Polar 1 to 4; each with a specific path), the airspace was inaugurated in 2001, but the first non-stop polar flight took place in 1998 between Hong Kong and New York on Polar 1, taking 16 hours. This allowed for direct connections without a technical stop at Anchorage. London, in particular, could now be directly connected to Tokyo, Beijing, and Hong Kong. Major long-distance air corridors were restructured, leading to the decline of Anchorage as an air passenger hub. However, because it served as an intermediary location for transpacific cargo flows, Anchorage experienced substantial growth in air cargo activity and remains a major air cargo hub.
The closure of Russian airspace to the airlines of many countries after its invasion of Ukraine in 2022 forced some carriers to move away from polar routes. These include carriers from the European Union and North America. Asian carriers, particularly Chinese carriers, are still allowed to use Russian airspace, implying that polar routes are still available but again constrained by geopolitics. These constraints were further exacerbated by the Iran War in 2026, since the shortest route avoiding the Russian and Iranian airspaces had to go through a narrow corridor through Georgia and Azerbaijan. This resulted in detours similar to those experienced during the Cold War. Still, these detours involve a small share of the global air traffic, which is mainly related to regional connectivity within North America, Europe, and East Asia.