If you think only in Mercator (e.g.), it's easy to fall into erroneous concepts. A great example of this came when, years ago, I had a business trip from Texas where I live to Dubai.
A friend asked, cleverly aware of the distance involved, if the flight went east or west -- because if you have Flat Map Brain, that's what you default to, right?
The answer is "neither."
The route went mostly north from Houston, crossed Canada and began trending south (without turning!) over / around Iceland; we approached Dubai from the north, more or less.
I remember the flight back home going over Iran, but it was at least a decade ago and regional tensions may have made them change that. This site
I'd imagine your flight would've avoided Russia, afaik even before the war they were obnoxious about who can fly over them/how much it would cost: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdNDYBt9e_U
I've no recollection about flying in Russian airspace, but I definitely did snap a phonecam pic of the seatback map showing us flying between the Elburz mountains and Tehran. This was in 2012, so 11 years ago (per the date of the pic I found).
The path suggested by that position absolutely implies flight over Russian territory, but obviously I have no data beyond that. It seems unlikely that an airliner would, like, zigzag around; n.b. that I was on Emirates, not a US carrier, and Russia (and other countries) probably doesn't treat them like they would an airline run out of a NATO country.
Or, at least, probably didn't in 2012. No idea what the rules are now.
EDIT: I found this article which notes that, at least as of a year ago, Emirates was flying TO Russia, so presumably flights through Russian airspace en route to other places were okay as well before the war.
Well, zig-zags happen, almost all airlines avoided flying over Ukraine after the MH17 shootdown, and no flights fly straight from point to point like what gcmap.com would show, they follow "roads", e.g: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_Tracks . It's also possible they'd avoid Russia if the detour costs less than the overfly fee.
Yeah Emirates didn't join in the sanctions, so they can still fly to, and over Russia. A few weeks ago there was an Air India that was flying from India to the US over Russia, and had to make an emergency landing in Russia, there were concerns whether they'd be allowed to import a replacement engine into Russia because the sanctions.
A friend asked, cleverly aware of the distance involved, if the flight went east or west -- because if you have Flat Map Brain, that's what you default to, right?
The answer is "neither."
The route went mostly north from Houston, crossed Canada and began trending south (without turning!) over / around Iceland; we approached Dubai from the north, more or less.
I remember the flight back home going over Iran, but it was at least a decade ago and regional tensions may have made them change that. This site
https://flightaware.com/live/flight/UAE211
shows them avoiding Iranian airspace now, but the flight path seems otherwise about the same.