New Delhi: Artery to westbound flights choked
More than a third of India’s international air traffic ground to a halt on Sunday as Iranian missile and drone strikes forced the closure of the Gulf’s three great aviation hubs, severing the corridor through which the vast majority of India’s westbound flights — to the Middle East, Europe and North America’s East Coast — are routed.
The ministry of civil aviation said a total of 350 flights operated by Indian carriers had been cancelled on Sunday and the government “is in close coordination with airlines, airport operators and other stakeholders to proactively monitor the situation and facilitate necessary passenger support”.
A June 2025 report by the International Air Transport Association found that the Middle East accounts for 39.2% of all India’s international passenger traffic — 14.9 million travellers in 2024, more than any other region. That corridor runs through a handful of Flight Information Regions that, by late Saturday, had been shut simultaneously and indefinitely.
By the time the last NOTAMs — the formal aviation instruments declaring airspace closed — were issued, they covered a sweep of sky commonly used by westbound traffic. Tehran has been shut since Saturday noon, with the warning extending the conflict risk over international waters in the Persian Gulf and Oman Sea. Baghdad followed within hours. “The shutdown of Baghdad Flight Information Region at 13:10 IST on February 28 is particularly significant for Indian carriers, as it directly blocks the northern corridor typically used for India–Europe overflights,” an official said. Kuwait, Bahrain, Doha, Jeddah and Damascus closed in quick succession.
These closures choked an already constrained air corridor for Indian airlines: the Pakistani airspace has been closed to Indian carriers for eleven months, eliminating one primary route west. The Gulf corridor — through the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and onward — was the principal alternative.
With both now unavailable, airlines have been forced onto a longer southern arc. Flights now track southwest over the Arabian Sea, enter through southern Oman, thread through the mandatory waypoints of Jeddah’s airspace — itself operating under restrictions, with transiting aircraft confined to defined waypoints — and cut west over the Red Sea and Egypt before reaching the Mediterranean.
This has added to flying time and airlines are exploring what officials described as “southern deviations or technical halts” as the only viable options remaining. The diversion adds between one and two hours to journey times.
Air India’s Delhi–London service on February 28 flew this southern arc, arriving 50 minutes later than the previous day’s flight on the same route. The airline, the only Indian carrier operating transatlantic services, said that its flights to New York’s JFK and Newark are now operating with a technical stop at Rome’s Fiumicino Airport — a refuelling halt made necessary by the additional range the southern diversion demands.
Select Europe services have been cancelled entirely: the Amritsar–Birmingham, Delhi–Zurich and Delhi–Copenhagen routes and their return legs were grounded on March 2. “All other flights to North America and Europe will operate per schedule using alternative routings over available airspaces in the Middle East, which is expected to add to the flying times,” the airline said.
Experts said the financial toll is being tallied. “The weekly impact to Indian and international airlines flying to and from India stands at an extremely conservative estimate of ₹875 crore,” said Mark D Martin, chief executive of aviation consultancy Martin Consulting. “At the moment, Pakistani, Iranian and UAE airspaces are shut down — this blocks nearly all flight access to Europe, the US and flights into the Persian Gulf. Chances of improvement in the airspace closures for at least one week are less.”
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