Over 5 thousand flights canceled in just over twenty-four hours, thousands of planes diverted, hubs deserted. After the US and Israeli attacks on Iran and Tehran’s response, global air travel is experiencing its biggest disruption since Covid. It is not just the Middle East that is affected: the shock wave extends to Europe, Asia-Pacific and North America, transforming intercontinental routes into a dead-end labyrinth.
The simultaneous closure of the airspaces of Iran, Iraq, Israel, Syria, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates has broken the main East-West routes. The “highways of the sky” over the Gulf, crucial to connecting Europe and Asia, have suddenly disappeared from radar maps.
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The Gulf hubs paralyzed
The hardest blow concerns the hubs of Dubai and Doha, among the busiest in the world for long-haul flights. Almost 1,800 connections were canceled on Saturday, while on Sunday the cancellations exceeded 3,500 in the Middle Eastern area. Globally, over 19,000 flights experienced delays.
Airlines such as Emirates, Qatar Airways and Etihad found themselves with dozens of wide-body planes in the air as airspaces were closed one after another. Some planes reversed course after ten or fifteen hours of travel, others landed in already congested alternative European airports. Sold out car parks, fuel calculated to the limit, crews out of shift: operational management has turned into a race against time.
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Domino effect on global companies
The crisis spares no one. Lufthansa (together with Ita Airways and Swiss), Air France, British Airways, Turkish Airlines, Delta Air Lines, American Airlines, up to Asian carriers such as Singapore Airlines and Air India, have suspended or drastically reduced connections to Tel Aviv, Dubai, Doha and other cities in the area.
For passengers it means missed connections, forced overnight stays, returns to the departure point after hours in flight. Approximately 90 thousand people pass through the Gulf hubs alone every day on their way between Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia: a network that now proceeds in fits and starts.
The recommendation to avoid Middle Eastern airspace
The European Aviation Safety Agency has recommended avoiding the entire Middle Eastern space due to the risk of accidental involvement of civilian flights. In some cases, pilots have reported sightings of remote missile launches. It is a level of military tension that makes any planning unpredictable. The companies announce gradual reopenings, but the restoration will be complex: aircraft and crews are dispersed across multiple continents, rotations are disrupted. Normality will not return in a few hours.
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