Renewed fears of a regional conflict involving Iran have put leading airlines on edge.
Air France suspended flights to Dubai on Friday and resumed them the next day, saying it would continue to monitor the “geopolitical situation” in “real time.”
Its partner airline KLM on Friday said it had suspended flights until further notice to Dubai, Riyadh, Dammam and Tel Aviv and would not fly through the airspace of Iraq, Iran, Israel and several countries in the Gulf.
British Airways temporarily suspended flights to Bahrain on 16 January, citing the “situation in the region.”
FinnAir that day said it had rerouted its flights to Dubai and Doha from Iraqi to Saudi Arabian airspace.
Lufthansa on 14 January said it would avoid Iranian and Iraqi airspace until further notice and would operate only day flights to Tel Aviv and the Jordanian capital of Amman for several days.
Israeli airlines El Al, Arkia, and Israir said yesterday that many passengers were contacting them about possible flight disruptions and said they were easing terms for canceling tickets.
The Israeli Tourism Ministry today said it had put together a plan to evacuate tens of thousands of tourists if the country is forced to shut its airspace.
Sparking the unease, President Donald Trump last Wednesday implicitly renewed his threat to attack the Iranian regime as what he called a US “armada” headed toward the Middle East.
Referring to the regime, he said he would be “watching them very closely” and that “maybe we would have to use” the force being deployed, which includes an aircraft carrier, several guided-missile destroyers and other assets.
The US lacked a large force in the region when Trump early this month threatened to bomb regime targets as large numbers of protesters were being killed across Iran.
The regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its Basij auxiliary militia crushed the protests by 11 January but Trump has indicated that he could order airstrikes if arrested protesters are executed.
Although terrorized, ordinary Iranians are so economically desperate that they could return to the streets in coming weeks and months, leading to a new round of killings.
It is unclear what US bombing might achieve even if IRGC targets were hit over an extended period.
A senior Iranian official on Friday said the regime will treat any attack “as an all-out war against us.”
The regime previously threatened to respond to any US airstrikes by staging attacks against US military personnel in the region. US bases in Iraq, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and even Jordan and Turkey conceivably could be targeted.
Iranian-orchestrated attacks on US civilians or those who could be mistaken for them are much less likely but cannot be ruled out completely.
The bottom line is that the crisis is not over, either for Iran or the region.
Memories are fresh of commercial flight cancellations and delays across the Gulf Arab monarchies last June triggered by the one-off US bombing of Iranian nuclear sites and calibrated Iranian missile attack on US military assets at Al Udeid Airbase in Qatar.
Personnel may undertake routine travel to the Gulf Arab monarchies and Israel but should monitor regional developments and the status of flights constantly.
Iran should be avoided completely.
