Airports closed, thousands of travellers stranded
The attack on Iran by the United States and Israel disrupted flights across the Middle East and beyond Saturday as countries around the region closed their airspace and key airports that connect Europe, Africa and the West to Asia were directly hit by strikes.
Airports across the Middle East remained closed Sunday as the conflict moved into its second day. Emirates Airlines suspended all flights to and from Dubai until at least Sunday afternoon. The Qatar airport was closed until at least Monday morning, according to Qatar Airways. Israeli airspace also remained closed Sunday.
The closures have stranded tens of thousands of travelers around the world.
Hundreds of thousands of travelers were either stranded or diverted to other airports Saturday after Israel, Qatar, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait and Bahrain closed their airspace. There also was no flight activity over the United Arab Emirates, flight tracking website FlightRadar24 said, after the government there announced a “temporary and partial closure” of its airspace.
That led to the closure of key hub airports in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha, and the cancellation of more than 1,800 flights by major Middle Eastern airlines.
The three major airlines that operate at those airports — Emirates, Qatar Airways and Etihad — typically have about 90,000 passengers per day crossing through those hubs and even more travelers headed to destinations in the Middle East, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium.
Two airports in the United Arab Emirates reported incidents as the government there condemned what it called a “blatant attack involving Iranian ballistic missiles” on Saturday.
Officials at Dubai International Airport — the largest in the United Arab Emirates and one of the busiest in the world — said four people were injured, while Zayed International Airport in Abu Dhabi said that one person was killed and seven others were injured in a drone strike. Strikes were also reported at Kuwait International Airport.
Though Iran did not publicly claim responsibility, the scope of retaliatory strikes that Gulf nations attributed to Iran extended beyond the American bases that it previously said it would target.
“For travelers, there’s no way to sugarcoat this,” said Henry Harteveldt, an airline industry analyst and president of Atmosphere Research Group. “You should prepare for delays or cancellations for the next few days as these attacks evolve and hopefully end.”
Airlines that are crossing the Middle East will have to reroute flights around the conflict, with many flights headed south over Saudi Arabia. That will add hours to those flights and consume additional fuel, adding to the costs airlines will have to absorb. So ticket prices could quickly start to increase if the conflict lingers. The added flights will also put pressure on air traffic controllers in Saudi Arabia, who might have to slow traffic to make sure they can handle it safely. And the countries that closed their airspace will miss out on the overflight fees airlines pay for crossing overhead.
But Mike McCormick, who used to oversee air traffic control for the Federal Aviation Administration before he retired and is now a professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, said over the next few days, these countries might be able to reopen parts of their airspace once American and Israeli officials share with the airlines where military flights are operating and how capable Iran remains at firing missiles.
“Those countries then will be able to go through and say, okay, we can reopen this portion of our space but we’ll keep this portion of our airspace closed,” McCormick said.
