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The joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran have grounded more than 3,200 flights in forty-eight hours, closed airspace across eight sovereign states, and knocked offline three of the planet’s largest transit hubs – Dubai, Doha, and Abu Dhabi. For the global aviation industry, already squeezed out of Russian airspace since 2022, there is nowhere left to reroute.
A Region Goes Silent
Operation Epic Fury began at roughly 9:45 a.m. Tehran time on Saturday, 28 February. Within hours, Iran, Israel, Iraq, Jordan, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates had declared full or partial airspace closures, as Al Jazeera reported. Syria shut its southern corridor along the Israeli border. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency responded with a Conflict Zone Information Bulletin covering the entire Middle East and Persian Gulf, effective until at least the end of March, warning of “high risk to civil aviation” at all altitudes and all flight levels. That is not a soft recommendation. It means European carriers are operationally barred from the region until EASA lifts the bulletin.
The numbers landed fast. According to aviation analytics firm Cirium, 966 of 4,218 flights scheduled to land in the Middle East on Saturday were scrapped outright – about 23 percent. For Sunday, Cirium counted 716 cancellations out of 4,329 scheduled flights before dawn. FlightAware, which tracks global operations, counted over 18,000 delayed flights and 2,350 cancellations worldwide by Saturday evening alone. Those figures will climb. As of Sunday morning, Emirates – the world’s largest international airline – suspended operations indefinitely, as Bloomberg reported. Etihad extended cancellations until Monday at 2 a.m. local time. Qatar Airways said it would reassess at 9 a.m. Monday. Between them, according to data Cirium shared with the Associated Press, those three carriers normally move about 90,000 passengers a day through their Gulf hubs.
The Double Squeeze Nobody Prepared For
Here is the thing that gets lost in the headlines. The Middle East corridor was never supposed to be this critical. It became the default Europe-Asia route after Russia closed its airspace to most Western airlines following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Flights that once tracked the polar route over Siberia were pushed south through Turkish, Iraqi, and Iranian airspace, then onward via the Gulf hubs. That workaround just collapsed.
Linus Bauer, who heads UAE-based aviation consultancy BAA & Partners, told The National that “if airspace avoidance persists, airlines face structurally higher operating costs, weaker aircraft utilisation and profit margin pressure – especially on long-haul networks reliant on Middle East transit corridors.” He’s underselling it. Rerouting around Iranian airspace alone was already costing airlines approximately $6,000 in additional operating expenses per flight hour, as reported by Aerospace Global News in late February. Now there is no Iranian airspace, no Iraqi airspace, no Gulf airspace, and no Russian airspace. What remains is a narrow band through Egyptian and Saudi territory that is itself under strain – and Saudi airspace carries its own restrictions during active military operations on the Arabian Peninsula.
Wizz Air suspended all flights to Israel, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Amman through 7 March. Turkish Airlines cancelled routes to more than a dozen Middle Eastern destinations. Lufthansa, British Airways, Air France, Air India, Cathay Pacific, and Japan Airlines all pulled services. Air India went further and cancelled Sunday flights between India, Europe, and the United States, as CNBC reported, because even those routes normally transit the Gulf region. That one detail reveals how far the disruption reaches: a passenger booked Mumbai-to-London was grounded not because of fighting in India or Britain, but because there is no safe corridor in between.
Dubai Takes a Direct Hit
Iran’s retaliatory strikes did not spare the Gulf hubs that serve as the engine room of global aviation connectivity. Dubai International Airport – which handled a record-breaking volume of passengers in 2025 and was approaching the 100-million mark – reported four injuries from Iranian ballistic missile impacts. Zayed International Airport in Abu Dhabi confirmed one fatality. Both incidents were reported by Euronews, citing airport officials. The UAE government condemned what it called a “blatant attack involving Iranian ballistic missiles.” These are not abstract security advisories anymore. Physical infrastructure at the world’s busiest international airport has been hit during active combat.
Markets Price the Chaos
Airlines got hit before the first bomb fell. On Friday, with strikes widely expected, European carrier stocks cratered: IAG dropped 7.4 percent, Air France-KLM fell 6.4 percent, Wizz Air tumbled 8.7 percent, and Lufthansa shed 3.6 percent, according to data compiled by Reuters and Investing.com. Across the Atlantic, United Airlines lost 8.4 percent, Delta 6.6 percent, and American Airlines 6.2 percent, per Barron’s. The US Global Jets ETF tracked the sector lower by four percent. Seaport Research Partners analyst Daniel McKenzie warned that the escalation could “erode” 2026 earnings expectations – and that was before anyone knew Dubai airport would be physically struck.
Then there is fuel. Brent crude closed Friday at $72.48 a barrel, up 2.45 percent, its highest level since July, according to Reuters. Bloomberg’s Javier Blas estimated that Monday’s open could see a 10-to-15 percent jump, potentially pushing Brent past $80. If the Strait of Hormuz – through which roughly 13 million barrels per day of crude transit, about 20 percent of global seaborne supply, per Kpler data – faces sustained disruption, analysts at RBC and Barclays have flagged scenarios above $100, as CNBC reported. OPEC+ met Sunday and agreed to add 206,000 barrels per day for April, according to Fortune, but as Rystad Energy’s Jorge Leon put it, “this move is unlikely to calm markets – it’s a signal, not a solution.” The surge in oil and gold prices triggered by the strikes has immediate knock-on effects for airline fuel hedging, which many carriers had not adjusted for a full-scale Gulf conflict.
War-risk insurance is another cost layer that will compound fast. Dylan Mortimer, marine hull UK war leader at broker Marsh, told CNBC that “near-term rate increases for Marine Hull insurance in the Gulf could range from 25 to 50 percent.” Aviation war-risk premiums follow the same logic. After the 2022 Ukraine invasion, hull war-risk insurance for flights near Ukrainian airspace spiked by multiples. Expect similar repricing for any route touching the Gulf.
What Comes Next
Eric Schouten, head of aviation security advisory firm Dyami, gave the bluntest assessment to Al Jazeera: “Passengers and airlines can expect airspace to be shut for quite some time in the region.” Trump confirmed on Truth Social that strikes would continue “throughout the week or, as long as necessary.” Iran has already retaliated against US bases in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE. As long as missiles are flying in both directions, EASA’s bulletin stays in force, Gulf airports remain shuttered, and the 90,000-passenger-a-day transit machine stays offline.
For European travellers headed to Asia, the calculus is grim. With Russian airspace off-limits since 2022, the geopolitical risk that prediction markets had been pricing for weeks has now materialised in the most operationally devastating way possible. There is no quick reroute. There is no spare corridor. The aviation industry is flying blind – into a map with very few open skies left.
For a complete timeline of how the Iran war reshaped global markets, see our reference page.
