DUBAI, March 17 (Reuters) – The United Arab Emirates briefly closed its airspace on Tuesday in response to incoming missile and drone threats from Iran, a second straight day of aviation disruption after a drone caused a fire near Dubai airport on Monday.
The U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, now in its third week, has thrown global aviation into turmoil, with flights cancelled, rescheduled and rerouted, as most Middle East airspace remains shut over fears of missile and drone attacks.
Many Gulf-based airlines have been operating only a fraction of their pre-war flights, although Dubai-based Emirates has had fewer cancellations than some others. Monday’s closure caused a sharp drop, according to data from Flightradar.com, which did not yet have data available for Tuesday.
The war has disrupted travel via the busy Gulf region, a key global hub between Europe and Asia, sent fuel charges and ticket prices surging, hit flows of goods such as critical medicines and thrown holiday plans into disarray.
The UAE’s General Civil Aviation Authority said flights had returned to normal on Tuesday after earlier announcing the temporary airspace closure, state media agency WAM reported.
WINNERS AND LOSERS AMONG AIRLINES, HOLIDAY DESTINATIONS
The war has hit the region’s huge airline groups, including Emirates, Qatar Airways, Etihad Airways, flydubai and others.
Germany’s Lufthansa expects the dominance of those Gulf carriers on Asian routes to be diminished by the conflict, its CEO Carsten Spohr told business magazine Manager Magazin in an interview published on Tuesday.
In a signal that it could take weeks, if not months, for Middle East airspace to return to normal, IAG-owned British Airways extended cancellations of flights to Dubai, Bahrain and Tel Aviv until June and is adding routes elsewhere.
The airline is adding more flights to destinations such as Singapore and Bangkok, which it said was in response to the conflict in the Middle East. It added that more customers were looking for “alternative getaways” in places like the Caribbean.
“We know there is short-term demand as a result of the situation in the Middle East,” Neil Chernoff, British Airways Chief Planning and Strategy Officer, said in a statement.
“To support customers with alternative routes from popular destinations we have already launched additional flights, and we will continue to monitor customer demand and add flights to our schedule if we’re able to do so.”
(Reporting by Enas Alashray and Federico Maccioni in Dubai; Writing by Adam Jourdan; Editing by Tom Hogue and Peter Graff)
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