3 ms·

The US doesn't pick a flight. The US says: "You're not welcome, you have XX hours to leave the country". The diplomatic personnel have to figure out their own

The US doesn't pick a flight. The US says: "You're not welcome, you have XX hours to leave the country". The diplomatic personnel have to figure out their own ride home. Normally that's fine (private charter flight, commercial, whatever), but in this case there are few (no?) flights to Russia, and the Russian's can't fly there due to airspace restrictions. So in this case, Russia asked for a special exemption to the US airspace restriction so it could get its personnel out. The US said "fine", and the Russians are flying the IL-96 in to pick up its personnel

Symbiote 5y ago
The FAA ban has an exception for diplomatic flights: "EXCEPT ... STATE AIRCRAFT OPERATIONS GRANTED A DIPLOMATIC CLEARANCE BY THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE" There are commercial options, e.g. flying to Turkey, the Middle East, China, India etc and taking a connecting flight to Moscow. But Russia probably doesn't want a large group of their spies and families travelling together on a commercial flight.