Weird flight path from Singapore to Heathrow

Hi from seat 1B on SQ320 from Singapore to London Heathrow, I will post a TR later but the service on board in First Class is amazing.

A bit of a question, the great circle route LHR-SIN goes over southern Russia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and down to Singapore, which is also the route we did roughly take on the way there.

On the way back however we flew pretty much straight to MCT then turned up and followed the southern Iraq border and then up through Jordan where we currently are..

Any idea why they choose this routing? I can imagine the earthquake in Pakistan removing emergency landing sites, but this is a 4 engine bird so no ETOPS... The other alternative is jetstreams, but we are struggling mostly against headwind according to the IFE.

Cheers
sky

Could it be that the earthquake has compromised Pakistani ATC and therefore flights are being re-routed around their airspace?

The weather?

Flight routes from SIN to LHR take a variety of factors into account.
However, the 2 main ones are normally winds (avoiding headwinds and following tailwinds) and air traffic.

Routes from LHR to SIN and SIN to LHR are sometimes different depending on the time of year given the direction of the winds over Russia and the Indian Ocean.

Russian route was used when Gulf War 1 & 2 were on (turn north into Russian at Delhi then fly over Estonia/Latvia). Do not think Kashmir earthquake had much to do with this.