Travel chaos deepens
\nAirspace over Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Israel, Bahrain, the UAE and Qatar remained virtually empty
\n DUBAI
\n Global air travel remained heavily disrupted on Sunday as continued air strikes kept major Middle Eastern airports, including Dubai, the world\u2019s busiest international hub, closed in one of the sharpest aviation shocks in recent years.
\nKey transit airports including Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the UAE, and Doha in Qatar, were shut or severely restricted as much of the region\u2019s airspace remained closed, with the Gulf grappling with uncertainty after U.S. and Israeli strikes killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday.
\nIsrael said it launched another wave of strikes on Iran on Sunday, while loud blasts were heard for a second day near Dubai and over Doha, after Iran launched retaliatory air attacks on the neighbouring Gulf states.
\nDubai International Airport sustained damage during Iran\u2019s attacks, while airports in Abu Dhabi and Kuwait were also hit. Thousands of flights have been affected across the Middle East since the U.S. first launched attacks on Iran on Saturday, according to data on FlightAware, a flight tracking platform.<\/p>\n
Ripple effects
\nThe airport closures have rippled far beyond the Middle East. Dubai and neighbouring Doha sit at the crossroads of east-west air travel, funnelling long-haul traffic between Europe and Asia through tightly scheduled networks of connecting flights.
\nWith those hubs idle, aircraft and crews remained stranded out of position, disrupting airline schedules worldwide.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s the sheer volume of people and the complexity,\u201d said UK-based aviation analyst John Strickland.
\n\u201cIt is not only customers, it is the crews and aircraft all over place.\u201d
\nAirlines across Europe, Asia and the Middle East cancelled or rerouted flights to avoid closed or restricted airspace, lengthening journeys and driving up fuel costs. The disruption has been intensified by the loss of Iranian and Iraqi overflight routes, which had grown more important since the Russia-Ukraine war forced airlines to avoid both countries\u2019 airspace.
\nThe Middle East airspace closures were squeezing airlines into narrower corridors, with fighting between Pakistan and Afghanistan adding a further risk, said Ian Petchenik, communications director at Flightradar24.
\n\u201cThe risk of protracted disruption is the main concern from a commercial aviation perspective,\u201d Petchenik said.
\n\u201cAny escalation in the conflict between Pakistan and Afghanistan that results in the closure of airspace would have drastic consequences for travel between Europe and Asia.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Travel chaos deepens Airspace over Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Israel, Bahrain, the UAE and Qatar remained virtually empty DUBAI Global air travel remained heavily disrupted on Sunday as continued air strikes kept major Middle Eastern airports, including Dubai, the world\u2019s busiest international hub, closed in one of the sharpest aviation shocks in recent years. Key transit …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":94469,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94453"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94470,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94453\/revisions\/94470"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}