Air travel across the Middle East continues gradually stabilizing more than five months after the outbreak of the U.S.-Iran conflict severely disrupted one of the world’s busiest aviation corridors, though several major hubs remain constrained by damaged infrastructure, safety advisories and ongoing regional hostilities.
The Iran war triggered widespread airspace closures beginning Feb. 28, when U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran plunged the region into conflict, grounding tens of thousands of flights and severing key global transit hubs connecting Europe, Asia, Africa and North America. According to travel platform Wego, the resulting grounding of flights and temporary isolation of mega-hubs like Dubai and Doha represented the most disruptive systemic shock to global aviation since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Several major hubs are now operating close to normal levels. The United Arab Emirates, home to Dubai and Abu Dhabi, is described as fully open, according to Wego’s most recent assessment. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman are all described as largely open, though each continues to carry some operational caveats depending on the specific airport and airline involved. Dubai International Airport is running flights across all three of its terminals, and Qatar Airways confirmed earlier this summer that it had restored flights to 85% of its pre-crisis schedule levels.
Kuwait represents the clearest ongoing exception to that broader recovery. Kuwait’s main airport remains not fully operational, according to Newsweek’s assessment of the current situation, with key infrastructure still damaged and some terminals remaining closed. Foreign airlines continue to face restrictions at the airport, and while portions of Kuwaiti airspace have reopened, international routes into and out of the country remain limited compared with pre-conflict levels. Terminal 1, the airport’s primary international facility, has remained closed since suffering significant structural damage, including a partial roof collapse, during a strike in early June, with Kuwait Airways and Jazeera Airways instead operating out of Terminals 4 and 5.
Even in airspace that is technically classified as open, aviation safety advisories tied to earlier missile, drone or military activity continue to shape how airlines operate throughout much of the region. Regulators and airlines have continued flagging elevated risk across Iran, Iraq and broader Gulf airspace, according to aviation safety tracking service safefly.aero, with some carriers selectively avoiding certain flight paths or reducing service frequencies even where no formal airspace closure remains in place.
The European Union Aviation Safety Agency has maintained some of the most cautious guidance among international regulators. EASA’s Conflict Zone Information Bulletin, most recently extended through Aug. 31, instructs EASA-regulated airlines to avoid flying within the airspace of the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar at any altitude, along with a defined portion of the Gulf of Oman, citing continued risk tied to missile, drone and combat aircraft activity linked to the region’s unstable security situation. That advisory has led numerous major international carriers, including British Airways, Singapore Airlines, Air Canada and members of the Lufthansa Group, to extend their own suspensions of Middle East routes well into the autumn, even as UAE-based carriers such as Emirates, Etihad Airways and flydubai continue operating the substantial majority of their networks.
Other pockets of restriction persist across the broader region as well. Four airports in southern Saudi Arabia were closed by NOTAM earlier this summer after a Houthi missile and drone attack, part of a broader pattern of intermittent strikes and closures that has continued affecting specific airports even as most of the region’s major hubs have returned to largely normal operations. Air traffic routing through the middle of the Gulf has also remained complicated by Kuwait’s ongoing limitations, forcing many international operators to route flights around the country via either a southern corridor through Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Oman, or a more northerly path, according to aviation monitoring group OPSGROUP.
Airlines have continued a gradual, staggered process of restoring previously suspended routes throughout the summer. British Airways resumed flights to Dubai and Doha beginning July 1, while Gulf Air has steadily rebuilt its network following Bahrain’s airspace reopening, restoring service to cities including London, Dubai, Istanbul and Riyadh, with additional routes continuing to phase in through the summer months. Iraqi Airways has similarly resumed both domestic and international operations as part of a broader phased return to service across the region’s national carriers.
Given how frequently conditions have continued shifting throughout the conflict, travel monitoring services consistently advise passengers to verify their specific flight status directly with their airline before heading to the airport, rather than relying solely on general regional status updates, given how quickly individual route restrictions, terminal closures and safety advisories have continued changing across different countries and airlines throughout the ongoing conflict.
With Kuwait’s main airport still working through infrastructure repairs and several international regulators maintaining cautious advisories through the end of August, the broader Middle East aviation sector appears likely to continue its gradual, uneven recovery in the weeks ahead, even as the region’s largest hubs in Dubai, Doha and Abu Dhabi have largely returned to something closer to their pre-conflict operating tempo.
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