Open the flight tracking website Flightradar24 today. The change is unmistakable. What should be one of the world’s busiest aviation crossroads, a dense web of planes linking Europe, Asia and Africa, is instead a yawning gap. A hole in the sky.
Vast swaths of the region’s airspace have been closed or cleared as the conflict in Iran escalates and has ripple effects across the Middle East. And because the region is located at the epicenter of modern long-distance travel, the disruption has ripples far beyond the region.
For decades, traffic from Europe to Asia has flowed straight through the Middle East. The region is home to some of the aviation industry’s most powerful megahubs, such as Dubai International Airport, Hamad International Airport and Zayed International Airport, as well as airlines such as Emirates, Qatar Airways and Etihad Airways, whose business models are built on connecting East and West.
When that airspace is closed, the effects are immediate and global. Flights have to be rerouted, often taking longer, consuming more fuel, causing cascading problems for crews and aircraft, and costing more.
The aircraft has been moved and the crew is stranded. Increased uncertainty has implications for aviation insurance, ticket prices, and operational sustainability.
Tony Stanton, consultant director at Australia’s Strategic Air, describes Middle East airspace as a “high-capacity bridge” between Europe and Asia.
“If a bridge collapses or if a bridge is closed, it doesn’t really reduce traffic,” Stanton told CNN Travel. “They tend to cluster around those two main corridors, either to the north or south. And because those two corridors are narrow, we find that they’re very congested.”
The result is longer delays, increased confusion, and increased uncertainty.
There is no room for improvisation. “Airlines are not free to fly wherever they want,” Stanton says.
“You need permission to cross each country’s airspace, and you can only travel through airspace that is open and controlled by air traffic control,” he says. “Obviously, you need permission to fly over countries you haven’t flown over before.”
Airlines are bracing for geopolitical shifts. Sophisticated risk monitoring systems scan for global flashpoints and enable operations teams to model contingencies before a shutdown actually occurs.
New flight plans are calculated, fuel loads are adjusted, and crew positions are changed through what Stanton calls a “well-oiled process.”
But even this system can become strained during prolonged disruptions.
The current hole in the sky is reminiscent of previous aviation shocks, including months of paralysis during the Covid-19 pandemic, days of grounded transatlantic flights during the 2010 Icelandic volcanic eruption, and ongoing route changes caused by the Russia-Ukraine war.
A good example is Japan Airlines flight JL43 from Tokyo to London. It flew west over Russian territory ahead of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. For the past three years, I have flown east over the Pacific Ocean, Alaska, and Canada, totaling 2.4 hours of flight time and consuming approximately 5,600 gallons of additional fuel per flight, an increase of approximately 20%.
Those detours come at a price.
Long-haul aircraft already carry emergency fuel for last-minute route changes, but extended flight times may require additional crew, and refueling may be required if the new route exceeds the aircraft’s range.
“It also increases costs,” Singapore-based aviation analyst and consultant Brendan Sobie told CNN Travel. “In extreme cases, a refueling stop may be necessary as a long flight is outside the range of the aircraft you are using. You will have to land to take off again, which adds cost. There will be additional charges associated with the refueling scenario.”
Stanton said airlines will be covered by insurance to some extent.
“Actually, there is something called war risk insurance,” he explains. That doesn’t mean airlines won’t be affected financially. “If the insurance company determines that the risk is increased, they will ask for an increase in premiums.”
Meanwhile, oil prices, which are sensitive to Middle East conflicts, add a new variable.
“Airline stocks were obviously down a little bit today because of the economic and political uncertainty that could impact demand, especially in the short term,” Sobie says.
In the short term, travelers are unlikely to see sudden increases in ticket prices.
However, Stanton said that if the Iran crisis “becomes a sustained international event, airlines will try to reflect increased operating costs and reduced aircraft capacity in ticket prices…Airlines will try to do so and will have to recover their costs.”
Missing crew and aircraft
The operational impact goes beyond fuel. Many crews and aircraft are currently stranded in affected areas, which is one reason why travelers around the world may experience disruption from plane knock-ons this week.
“No matter where you are in the world, you can be affected by what’s going on right now,” Stanton says. “The aircraft is currently in London, but in the system the airline might have expected it to be in Singapore or Brisbane or somewhere else.”
Airlines have contingency plans in place to prepare for this type of scenario and activate reserve crews on standby.
“Typically, we send backup personnel in case people get sick and call an ambulance,” Stanton said. “They will replace aircraft. They will also have standby aircraft and may cancel flights to reset the network, which is a complex interconnected system.”
Airlines are housing stranded employees in hotels as they wait to see when and to what extent airspace will be reopened and how the situation will develop.
Emirates had already announced a limited resumption of some services on Monday night.
While crews wait for updates, some airline employees are posting updates on social media. Virgin Australia flight attendant Sarah Goodwin updated her TikTok followers to describe being stranded in Qatar’s capital Doha as the “craziest situation”.
“I never in my life thought I would be in a situation where I could hear missiles,” she said.
Airlines will focus on keeping crew members safe, Brendan Sobey said.
“In a crisis situation like this, obviously safety comes first. We try to take care of our crews as best we can,” he says. “And once the situation improves, we’ll try to restart things, get our crews back in place, get them home, and get back to normal operations as quickly as possible, and of course do it as safely as possible.”
Lufthansa Group’s Austrian Airlines operated a crew evacuation flight to Muscat, Oman, on Monday morning local time, before returning to Vienna, Austria, a company spokesperson told CNN.
The longer the disruption lasts, Sobie says, the longer it will take to recover. “If everything reopens completely, it will be easier than, say, a partial reopening, where there are still a lot of restrictions. So in this case, or in any case, it’s not really possible to predict or predict how long it will take to get back to normal operations.”
But Stanton added that concerns about safety outside of the affected areas are unwarranted. “The major airlines don’t just look at Flightradar24 and say, ‘Okay, everyone else is going north. Let’s go north.'”
He reiterated that airlines are “carrying out really structured intelligence and information-based risk assessments.”
“They have dedicated security teams, flight operations teams, dispatch teams. They listen to government advice. They have information that we probably don’t have and they make very deliberate decisions about when to conduct operations,” he says.
“Especially the big airlines…Personally, I feel confident flying on a British Airways, Qantas or Emirates aircraft because I have peace of mind in the systems and risk assessments that they run behind the scenes to manage their assets.”
