UAE airports see flight cancellation, delays: List of Dubai and Abu Dhabi arrivals, departures running late
Persian Gulf Tensions Rattle Regional Airspace: Dubai and Abu Dhabi Airports Brace for Cascading Delays
Theindiapostdaily.com – The fragile pause in hostilities between Washington and Tehran has shattered once again. On Tuesday night, American military forces resumed strikes against targets inside Iran, prompting the Islamic Republic to answer with a salvo of ballistic missiles and drones aimed at US installations across West Asia as well as allied sites in Bahrain, Jordan, Iraq, and Kuwait. Within hours, the ripple effects reached one of the world's busiest aviation corridors: the airspace threading through the Persian Gulf, where dozens of daily departures and arrivals funnel through two of the planet's most critical transit hubs.
For travelers — particularly those linking South Asia to the Middle East, Europe, and Africa — the renewed confrontation translates into a familiar but deeply frustrating reality: schedules slip, connections break, and terminals fill with passengers waiting for updated gate information. Airlines operating out of the Emirates have issued advisories that timetables may shift on very short notice as the situation evolves, urging passengers to monitor their bookings closely before heading to the airport.
Why the Gulf Corridor Matters
The airspace above the Persian Gulf sits at the intersection of three major flight corridors: South Asia to Europe, South Asia to East Africa, and intra-regional Middle East traffic. When that corridor tightens — whether through temporary no-fly zones, increased military activity, or precautionary rerouting — the knock-on effect is immediate. Even a single hour of restricted airspace can cascade delays across dozens of flights scheduled within the same window. This is precisely what unfolded across multiple airports on Wednesday.
Airport-by-Airport Impact
Zayed International Airport, Abu Dhabi
Abu Dhabi's main terminal absorbed a heavy load of late-arriving traffic, with both Air Arabia and Etihad seeing significant schedule slippage. On the arrivals side, Air Arabia services from Calicut (3L201), Chennai (3L142), Trivandrum (3L134), Ahmedabad (3L112), Sialkot (3L312), and Kathmandu (3L044) all landed behind their published times. Etihad's international roster was similarly affected: flights from Barcelona (EY114), Delhi (EY219, EY213), Islamabad (EY303), Moscow (EY844), Karachi (EY299), Ahmedabad (EY247), Peshawar (EY277), Chennai (EY343), Colombo (EY393), Nairobi (EY770), London Heathrow (EY068), Lisbon (EY100), Phuket (EY417), Bangkok (EY405), and Manchester (EY078) all arrived late.
Departures mirrored the disruption. Air Arabia's outbound services to Trivandrum (3L134), Ahmedabad (3L112), Sialkot (3L312), Kathmandu (3L044), and Tbilisi (3L715) slipped past their slots. Etihad departures to Moscow (EY844), Islamabad (EY303), Delhi (EY219, EY213), Karachi (EY299), Ahmedabad (EY247), Peshawar (EY277), Chennai (EY343), Colombo (EY393), Nairobi (EY770), London Heathrow (EY068), Lisbon (EY100), Phuket (EY417), Bangkok (EY405), and Manchester (EY078) were likewise pushed back. IndiGo's Tiruchirappalli shuttle, flight 6E1439, also ran behind schedule in both directions.
Dubai International Airport
Dubai's two-terminal complex faced its own wave of late traffic. Among Indian carriers, Air India Express's Kochi arrival (IX425) and SpiceJet services from Amritsar (SG5155), Kochi (SG5118), and Mumbai (SG5060) all touched down later than planned. On the outbound side, SpiceJet's India-bound departures to Pune (SG052), New Delhi (SG5106), and Kozhikode (SG5153) were delayed.
Flydubai, the low-cost carrier headquartered at Dubai's Terminal 2, logged delays across a wide geographic spread. Arrivals from Almaty (FZ1722, FZ1736), Bishkek (FZ1690), Moscow (FZ952, FZ988, FZ966), Jeddah (FZ920), Astana (FZ1304), Minsk (FZ1716, FZ1634), Addis Ababa (FZ642), Damascus (FZ1116), Abha (FZ816), and Baghdad (FZ202) all arrived late. One service was pulled entirely: the Entebbe-to-Dubai flight FZ652 was cancelled outright.
Emirates, the full-service flag carrier, saw its most extensive disruption. European and North American arrivals running behind schedule included EK527 from Hyderabad, EK565 from Bengaluru, EK020 from Manchester, EK010 from London Gatwick, EK194 from Lisbon, EK024 from Edinburgh, EK164 from Dublin, EK006 from London Heathrow, EK146 from Amsterdam, and EK180 from Warsaw. Italian and French arrivals EK098 (Rome), EK094 (Bologna), and EK082 (Lyon) were similarly affected. Across the Atlantic, EK232 (Washington), EK244 (Montreal), EK204 and EK206 (New York), EK236 (Chicago), EK238 (Boston), EK216 (Los Angeles), EK212 (Houston), and EK226 (San Francisco) all landed late.
Additional Emirates arrivals from Islamabad (EK613), Colombo (EK651), Bangkok (EK375), Malé (EK659), Cairo (EK928), and Jakarta (EK357) joined the backlog of delayed inbound traffic.
Wider Regional Fallout
The disruption was not confined to the Emirates. Bahrain International Airport, Queen Alia International Airport in Amman, and Kuwait International Airport all reported schedule irregularities as airlines applied precautionary spacing and rerouted aircraft around contested airspace. The pattern reflects a standard operational response: when a corridor's safety margin narrows, controllers and airline dispatch teams add buffer time, which quickly accumulates across successive sectors.
What Travelers Should Expect
Airlines have cautioned that published schedules may be revised repeatedly over the coming hours and days. Passengers with tight connections through Dubai or Abu Dhabi should allow additional layover time, check airline apps for real-time gate updates, and confirm whether travel insurance covers geopolitical-disruption delays. For those already in transit, airport information desks and airline service counters remain the fastest channels for rebooking or accommodation assistance.
The broader question for the region's aviation ecosystem is durability. The Gulf's airports have absorbed repeated shocks — from pandemic-era groundings to prior rounds of US-Iran exchange — and have each time restored normal operations within days. Yet every episode erodes passenger confidence and strains crew-rest and aircraft-maintenance cycles, effects that linger well after the last delayed flight finally lands.
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