Airport attacks put aviation in crosshairs of conflicts

Deadly attacks on Saudi Arabia’s second-busiest airport over the past week are highlighting how conflicts in the Middle East are upending air travel on a larger scale.

Aviation is increasingly in the middle of these sprawling clashes as threats and outright attacks have forced airlines to quickly cancel flights throughout the Middle East for days, weeks and, in some cases, months. Some carriers might redeploy planes that would be going to some Middle East destinations like Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Doha, Qatar, to other locations altogether.

“It’s a new paradigm. Civil aviation is being directly targeted and it has not been the case in the last couple of decades,” said Mark Zee, founder of OpsGroup, an independent aviation safety group whose members include pilots, dispatchers, airline employees and others.

The Saudi airport attacks, claimed by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis, were the deadliest in the country in more than a decade. Over the weekend, at least 13 people were killed and more than 300 injured when a projectile hit terminals at King Khalid International Airport in the Saudi capital Riyadh, officials said. Other attacks have included drones.

“Historically, airport security is focused on preventing unauthorized access to aircraft and the airport, not defending airspace,” said Jeff Price, a professor at the Metropolitan State University of Denver’s Department of Aviation and Aerospace Science and an airport management consultant.

The threats to aviation are forcing officials to rethink how to protect blind spots in these major public spaces.

“There is this established way to deal with kind of more conventional weapons such as missiles. It’s very expensive, but there is a way,” said Gulnaz Ukassova, UAE-based security director of information and analysis at risk management firm International SOS. “There is still no sort of foolproof way to deal with the threat posed by drones. The technology, obviously, is constantly evolving.”

King Khalid International Airport has been shut down for much of this week, and some carriers suspended operations there, citing safety concerns. CEOs of major oil companies also pulled out of an energy conference in the country.

Delta Air Lines, meanwhile, was less than two weeks away from launching an Atlanta-Riyadh route, the first nonstop commercial flight between the the two countries operated by a U.S. airline, according to the carrier.

But late Sunday, the Federal Aviation Administration warned U.S. carriers about safety-of-flight risks when flying in or over Saudi Arabia. On Monday morning, Delta said it would postpone the route’s debut until March.

The new Delta route comes as Saudi leadership seeks to boost tourism to the country, part of the kingdom’s Vision 2030 plan to diversify the economy from oil and attract international investment.

Air traffic in Saudi Arabia had been increasing rapidly. Scheduled growth in airplane seats in the market is up more than 23% this year from 2023, though the rise has recently slowed, according to aviation-data firm Cirium.

Whether travelers come back to the region depends on risk appetite. Ukassova said energy companies, which can depend on in-person visits to large projects, tend to have higher risk tolerance, while academics have a low bar for potential risks.

The conflicts have cut off big parts of airspace in the Middle East, mainly over Iran. The outbreak of the Iran war in February set off massive aviation, travel and safety crises.

For example, Australian carrier Qantas has changed its Perth, Australia-to-London route to avoid Iranian airspace. Because that flight is then longer, the carrier has added a stop in Singapore to refuel.

For four years, Western commercial passenger and cargo planes have already had to fly longer routes to avoid Russian airspace. Carriers started detouring away from Russia after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Taking longer routes to avoid potentially dangerous airspace has been adding to airlines’ fuel bills, which got even more expensive this year due to those same Middle East conflicts.

While much of the traffic to Dubai and Doha has rebounded from the first days of the war since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, it remains below 2025 levels, according to flight-data firm OAG. Capacity by seats across the Middle East is down 5.7% in October from last year, 2.2 million fewer seats, OAG reported.

Some airlines are opting to stay away from the region altogether.

“We will not fly to Dubai and Doha, and we need to wait until the situation gets settled,” Finnair CEO Turkka Kuusisto told reporters last month in New York.