What’s happening in the Middle East affects UK aviation too

We’re all watching the unfolding Middle East war with concern, worrying about what might happen next. Many of us have friends, colleagues and family stuck there either on holiday, in transit or at work and hoping they’ll stay safe and find a way of getting home soon. But there is so much uncertainty and although it is thousands of miles from the UK, the ripples from airspace closure always affect our international aviation industry. Until this morning, Saudi Arabia’s airspace was the only airspace in the region that remained open – and that has now partially closed following a drone strike earlier. Other countries, whose airspace closures were due to end later today, might yet have to extend them if further attacks happen.

So what does that mean for the UK? What happens here is very often influenced by what’s happening hundreds or even of thousands of miles away, whether it is stormy weather, wildfires or massive geopolitical upheaval such as this.

This huge black hole in Middle Eastern airspace means that air traffic – albeit greatly reduced – is now funnelling through ever narrower channels with significant pinch points. And that means a shift in the balance of traffic across Europe which even reaches here with traffic presenting at different UK entry points and at different times than we might have planned for.

Add to this the ongoing closure of Ukraine’s airspace and it’s easy to see why the situation in the Middle East is adding even more complexity for Europe’s air traffic system – and for the airlines, which are having to consider significantly longer routeings, flight times and fuel uplifts. For the past four years of the Ukraine war, flights to places like Japan, Korea and China have been rerouted further north via polar routes or south through the Middle East and Caucasus. That second option is now a major pinch point affecting capacity, cost, resilience and risk.

On Saturday, flights to and from the Middle East vanished off the UK’s schedule. On Sunday there were 524 fewer flights than the previous week. While a few flights have now left the Middle East, the situation is volatile and dynamic. We don’t know when airlines might be able to start repatriating travellers and it may be that airport night restrictions are lifted to help with the backlog of flights that will need to run. What seems certain is that things will be uncertain for some time to come.