The Iran crisis has unleashed severe disruption to global aviation.
Major Middle Eastern airports - including Dubai, the world’s busiest international travel hub - were shut after the strikes on Iran and its retaliation.
Dubai's international airport, which handles more than 1,000 flights a day, sustained damage during an attack on Sunday.
According to Cirium, the aviation analytics company, 716 flights are officially canceled for Sunday out of 4,329 scheduled flights in the Middle East listed above. Many airlines have not officially canceled their schedules, but those flights, by and large, will not operate.
According to Cirium, there are approximately 4,218 flights scheduled to arrive in the Middle Eastern countries listed below today, Feb 28, 2026, of which 966 were canceled, 22.9%. Roughly double that number for more than 1,800 cancellations (inbound, outbound to the Middle East, it added.
Agency inputs
Airports in Dubai, Doha, and Abu Dhabi are closed as countries across the Middle East shut their airspace. Flight maps showed skies over Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Israel, and Bahrain virtually empty, while airlines across Europe and the Middle East announced sweeping cancellations.
Some flights already enroute today were diverted. Most of those were from Middle Eastern carriers. Few non-Middle Eastern airlines had already departed at the time of the military action today. The attached spreadsheet shows diversions; essentially none from the Americas and few from Europe
"Passengers and airlines can expect airspace to be shut for quite some time," said Eric Schouten, head of aviation security advisory Dyami.
PASSENGERS STRANDED ACROSS EUROPE
Students travelling from Paris to Dubai said their college trip was abandoned. "We still have some students who went there earlier, and they're stuck in Dubai, and we don't know when they’ll be able to come back," said Benjamin Gnatek.
At Charles de Gaulle airport, Thai-bound traveller Roman Simon said his onward flight via Doha was cancelled. "Now, we’re trying to find a solution to still make our trip to Thailand," he told Reuters.
At Doha’s Hamad International Airport, gates were nearly empty as stranded passengers queued to make hotel arrangements, a Reuters witness said. As countries in the region closed their airspace, aircraft were forced to divert around Larnaca, Jeddah, Cairo, and Riyadh. Flightradar24 briefly went down due to surging demand.
The European Union's aviation regulator EASA on Saturday recommended its airlines stay out of the airspace affected by the ongoing military intervention.
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