Flightpath shuffle: how conflict in the Middle East has reshaped air routes

Independent

6 hours ago

What a difference a week makes. Last Saturday night, a void opened up on the live map of flights in progress on the tracking service Flightradar24. As US bombers struck targets in Iran, the skies over Iran and Iraq cleared. One British Airways plane, having flown from London Heathrow almost all the way to Dubai, turned around and sped back to Europe – landing in Zurich because the fuel and the crew's hours were running low.
Then on Monday night, the airspace of Qatar suddenly shut as Iranian missiles targeted an American base in the Gulf nation.
At the time, more than 100 planes were converging on Doha. Diversions began at once, coordinated by air-traffic controllers in Bahrain. The first plane to be diverted was a Qatar Airways Boeing 787 Dreamliner from London Gatwick, which was well into its descent into Doha when it was turned away and flew to the Saudi capital, Riyadh. Those passengers were relatively lucky, compared with the thousands who had already spent hours in the air and were simply flown back to where they started.
The most extreme example was Qantas flight 33 from Perth to Paris. The pilots of the ultra-long-haul aircraft were 300 miles off the west coast of India when they were alerted to the unfolding threat. Faced with rerouting to evade multiple threats, the crew turned the 787 around and finally touched down in the Western Australian capital after a 15-hour flight to nowhere.
Within six hours, the skies over Qatar opened again and the painstaking business of recovering the operation began.
As Jane Kinninmont, chief executive of UNA-UK and all-round Middle East expert has been telling The Independen t's daily travel podcast, the Iranian attack was strictly a performative, face-saving move. Global aviation and tourism, she said, could actually help to make a ceasefire stick.
'The wealthy Gulf countries have been trying to play a role as mediators, precisely because they have really important tourism sectors,' Ms Kinninmont says.
'They have now some of the biggest, best, flashiest airports in the whole world, and they just feel they cannot afford to let conflict put those things at risk.'
Qatar and the UAE also have vast fleets of planes that they want to shuttle between their home hubs, western Europe and North America – connecting these lucrative markets with points east and south. And that hasn't been easy this week.
The most direct route between Dubai and New York, for example, goes over Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Ukraine before reaching less stressed airspace over Poland, Denmark and Scotland. Ukraine is off the sky map for the foreseeable future, which means planes track along the northern shore of Turkey before resuming a northwestward path over the Black Sea.
Usually aircraft from the Gulf to Europe and beyond fly over either Iran or Iraq. Those nations' shared border parallels the optimum flight routes. For most of the week, though, airlines have studiously avoided Iran and Iraq – switching to a southerly route over Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The detour can add an hour or more to journey times – and also means entanglement with all the holiday flights linking the UK with Italy, Croatia and the Greek islands.
Yet as from Friday, Baghdad is back astride the intercontinental freeway once again. As I write, the Emirates flights from Manchester and Newcastle to Dubai are heading for the Iraqi capital, while another Emirates Airbus A380 has just crossed into Iraq from Syria on its path from Rome to Dubai.
Most other airlines, including British Airways, are sticking to the southern route over Saudi Arabia for now. But I predict that by the start of July they will be returning to the skies over Iraq.
Iranian airspace is far emptier – but some flights are coming back. Qatar Airways has just dispatched what I believe is its first flight over Iran for a week, on its way to Tashkent in Uzbekistan. FlyDubai, the short-haul sister airline to Emirates, is also operating across the eastern third of Iran to Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan. And Aeroflot is back, en route from Abu Dhabi to Moscow.
These are currently among the 'most tracked' flights on Flightradar24. I imagine some of the eyes on the skies belong to rival airlines, sizing up the prospect of returning to Iran. Aviation abhors an airspace vacuum.
As the long-suffering route planners get back to work, a final word from Middle East guru Jane Kinninmont: 'Travel is one of the greatest ways to learn about people and the world.
'Much better than reading about geopolitics is going to interesting, different and beautiful places. Also seeing what makes people different around the world, but what makes people the same. And remembering that the world is mostly not about politics.'
Simon Calder, also known as The Man Who Pays His Way, has been writing about travel for The Independent since 1994. In his weekly opinion column, he explores a key travel issue – and what it means for you.