With airspace over Iran, Israel, Jordan and Iraq closed following the Israeli attack on Iran, airlines are being forced to reroute their flights to ensure the safety of their passengers and crews.
Israel said on Friday it targeted Iran’s nuclear facilities, ballistic missile factories and military commanders at the start of what it warned was a prolonged operation to prevent Tehran from building a nuclear weapon.
Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport was closed until further notice and the country’s air defence units were put on alert for possible retaliation from Iran.
The Israeli carrier El Al Airlines said it had suspended flights to and from Israel, while some flights due to land in the country were diverted to Cyprus or Greece. Indeed, Athens airport is very busy, as Flightradar24 data shows.
Iranian airspace was closed until further notice, according to state media and announcements to pilots.
Air India, which flies over Iran for its flights to Europe and North America, said several flights were diverted or returned to their origins, including those from New York, Vancouver, Chicago and London.
Iraq closed its airspace early Friday and suspended all traffic at its airports, Iraqi state media reported.
Eastern Iraq near the border with Iran includes one of the world’s busiest air corridors, with dozens of flights crossing Europe and the Gulf at any given time, many of them on routes from Asia to Europe.
Flights are consistently diverted over Central Asia or Saudi Arabia, as flight tracking data showed.
Jordan, which lies between Israel and Iraq, closed its airspace several hours after the Israeli raid began.
“The situation is still unfolding carriers should be particularly cautious in the region at this time,” said the Safe Airspace website, run by OPSGROUP, a member-based organization that shares information on flight risk.
Several flights due to land in Dubai were diverted early on Friday. An Emirates flight from Manchester to Dubai was diverted to Istanbul and a flydubai flight from Belgrade was diverted to Yerevan, Armenia.
The financial carrier flydubai said it suspended flights to Amman, Beirut, Damascus, Iran and Israel and that some other flights were cancelled, rerouted or returned to their departure airports.
Qatar Airways cancelled its two scheduled flights to Damascus on Friday, according to Flightradar24 data.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the Middle East from October 2023 has resulted in commercial aviation sharing the skies with short-term barrages of drones and missiles on important flight paths – some of which were reportedly close enough for pilots and passengers to see.
The airspace of the Middle East was crossed by 1,400 flights to and from Europe every day last year, according to Eurocontrol figures.
Last year, planes were shot down by warfare systems in Kazakhstan and Sudan. These incidents followed the high-profile downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014 and Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752 en route from Tehran in 2020.
