U.S. President Joe Biden announced a ban on all Russian flights from American airspace during his State of the Union address on Tuesday, following similar actions by the European Union (EU) and Canada.

Russian flights have been effectively barred from U.S. destinations for the most part in recent days because of bans on the use of Canadian and European airspace.

Airlines already face potentially lengthy blockages of key east-west flight corridors after the EU and Moscow issued tit-for-tat airspace bans.

United Airlines and United Parcel Service (UPS) also said on Tuesday that they had suspended flying over Russian airspace, joining other major U.S. carriers Delta Air Lines and American Airlines.

Supply-chain pain

Global supply chains, already hit hard by the pandemic, will face increasing disruption and cost pressure from the closure of the skies which will affect over a fifth of air freight, while the hardest hit are likely to be Russian carriers which make up approximately 70 percent of the flights between Russia and the EU.

Airlines responsible for moving around 20 percent of the world's air cargo are affected by those bans, Frederic Horst, managing director of Cargo Facts Consulting, said on Tuesday.

Germany's Lufthansa, Air France KLM, Finnair and Virgin Atlantic have already canceled North Asian cargo flights over closed access to airspace.

Scandinavian airline SAS said it would reroute its once-weekly Copenhagen-Shanghai service to avoid Russian airspace, and had also paused its Copenhagen-Tokyo service.

Major Asian carriers like Korean Air Lines and Japan's ANA Holdings are still using Russian airspace, however, as are Middle Eastern airlines.

(With input from Reuters)