International Flight Route Question
 

I was curious to know, if a plane were to fly from, say, Norway to India, are there any nations that the airlines would purposely fly around due to political climate, instability, etc.?

In other words, if the most direct route were to take an airplane over Iraqi or Iranian or ??? airspace, would a different route be planned or is flying over such airspace the standard?

You can fly over just about any country in the world though you do need permits for each one. We fly over Iraq and in Iranian airspace all the time. You do need to follow procedures for each specific country. If an overfly permit is not recieved or invalidated (time period expired etc.) then you will have to fly around that country. A prime example is India overflights when operating from the Middle East to HongKong. Flying over means around 8.5 hours flying, going around is over 11 hours.

I remember hearing this one time about an AC flight flying to somewhere in south america. They were flying over this country, who apparently thought that AC had not been paying their bills for flying over their air space. SO this country kept telling them to turn around or be shot down. The plane finaly turned back around and headed back to Toronto. Got back and it was determined that the little country was wrong. Some idiots mistake cost thousands of dollars for AC.

OR they were waiting for a bribe...