The preventive attack from Israel against Iranian strategic installations triggered a chain reaction that paralyzed the entire Middle Eastern air corridor. Iran immediately closed its airspacefollowed by Iraq and Jordan, while Israel interrupted civil operations in Tel Aviv. Syria and Lebanon also imposed restrictions, redesigning the map of air navigation in the area in a few hours.
According to Eurocontrol, only 1,800 flights connected to European traffic suffered direct consequences, with on Friday 13 June, with over 650 cancellations. The axis between Europe and Asia, already compromised by the inaccessibility of the Russian and Ukrainian skies, has contracted further, forcing the airlines to improvise new corridors via Egypt and Saudi Arabia. From the following day, some countries like Lebanon and Jordan began to reopen their skies, but the system remains unstable and highly volatile routes.
European passengers blocked: delays, cancellations and longer flights
For those who start from Europe to Asia or Oceania, the current scenario imposes a drastic change: the Middle Eastern skies, essential to connect the two extremes of the Eurasian continent, have become impractical. The companies must rewrite the geography of their routes on the fly.
Air India, for example, deflected a dozen long -haul flights, finding himself improvising Scali in Vienna, Jeddah, Frankfurt. Nothing exceptional if we consider that the eastern Mediterranean constitute one of the few surviving gates, after the closure of the Russian and Ukrainian airplanes. The alternatives are not infinite: either you pass from the Red Sea via Egypt and Saudi Arabia, or go up towards the Caucasus and Turkmenistan. In both cases, flight times are stretched and the coincidences jump.
Consequentially, The cancellations multiply. THE Flights to Israel have been interrupted From all the main European carriers: Lufthansa, Air France-Klm, Ita Airways. El al he transferred part of his fleet abroad.
The Takes towards other regional metropoliseslike Beirut, Amman, Tehran, are suspended. The recommendation, within the limits of rationality, is not to go to the airport without having first verified the real state of the flight, assuming that the flight still exists.
Costs rise: the economic impact on European airlines
The impossibility of crossing strategic portions of aerial space forces European companies to operate on longer, inefficient, expensive routes. Each kilometer added implies more fuel, plus flight hours, more crew shifts. All elements that, in air transport, translate into one term: loss. The price of crude oil has undergone a new surgeconsequence of the instability of the markets.
These are not contingent difficulties. They are structural. The companies, already tried by the exclusion of the Russian and Ukrainian skies, must now completely review the architecture of their connections with the Asian continent. Some routes have been eliminated, others resized.
Meanwhile, geopolitical pressure also pours into the financial markets. The bags reacted as predictable: the title IAG, British Airways’ holding, left almost five percentage points on the ground. Similar reactions to Lufthansa, Air France and Ryanair are similar.
