If you’re scheduled to travel internationally in the coming days, especially through the Middle East, this could very well impact you…
Middle East flight cancellations & airspace closures
The United States and Israel have launched an attack on Iran. President Trump describes this as a “major combat operation” with the objective of eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime, “a vicious group of very hard, terrible people.”
Trump has urged the Iranian regime to “lay down” weapons or “face certain death,” and has called it their “only chance for generations.” He has also encouraged the people of Iran to “take over [their] government” after the operation.
In response, the Iranian regime has shot missiles toward countries hosting US military bases, causing even more chaos. Okay, make of this conflict what you will, but the point of this post is that it (obviously) has major implications for global aviation. Most of the major Gulf carriers have suspended all flights to and from their hubs, due to regional airspace closures.
Not only are many flights grounded, but we’re also seeing plenty of flights return to their origin or divert, as a result of these issues.
Expect flight operations to be impacted for days to come
It’s anyone’s guess how long this conflict lasts, but I would expect that this will have implications for flights to and from the Middle East for quite some time.
Furthermore, due to the way that Gulf carrier hubs are banked, this is going to be a pretty complicated recovery, when the entire operation stops for an extended period. At some point you just delay things in 24-hour chunks, so that you can start to normalize operations again.
Bottom line
Several countries in the Middle East have closed their airspace, as the United States and Israel attack Iran. As a result, we’re seeing tons of flight cancellations and diversions, with carriers like Emirates and Qatar Airways essentially shutting down for some amount of time.
So we’ll mark this as “developing,” but it’s definitely something to be aware of if you’re traveling in the coming days, given the domino effect of airline issues…
How do you see this playing out?
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