The late afternoon Emirates flight from London Heathrow to Dubai has an advertised connection to Bangkok of just one hour. Normally 60 minutes is sufficient for extricating passengers (and, separately, their checked baggage) from the world’s biggest passenger plane, the A380, and enabling them to board another SuperJumbo at a different gate at the airport that handles more international travellers than any in the world, all in the early hours of the morning.
But the remarkable, unrelenting choreography that allows millions of passengers to connect every day at Dubai, Doha, Abu Dhabi and many other hubs is under severe strain as a result of the unfolding humanitarian crisis in Lebanon.
With Russian and Ukrainian skies closed to Western aircraft, the options for flying from Europe to Asia seem to be narrowing by the day.
Airlines flying from Europe to the Gulf on Tuesday night into Wednesday experienced severe disruption, with Emirates and Qatar Airways – the two biggest Middle East carriers – diverting dozens of flights.
With many planes typically arriving at their destinations in Dubai and Doha several hours late, the carefully planned deployment of aircraft and crew was thrown into disarray.
Closed skies over Iraq and Iran saw some unusual manoeuvres, including an Air France jet from Paris to Mumbai that turned around over northern Iraq and flew back to Charles de Gaulle airport.
British Airways, too, was affected – with a London Heathrow to Dubai plane diverting late in its journey to Larnaca in Cyprus to refuel, and a Singapore-Heathrow flight that diverted to Dubai as its normal route was closed.
These are the key questions and answers.
What are the normal routes from Europe to the Gulf and south Asia?
Typically a plane will route over Germany, Austria and the Balkans to Turkey, flying the length of the country and turning southeast after passing Syria. Depending on the airline and its policies, the usual route is then over Iraq or Iran to the Gulf.
What has changed?
Since airspace was closed due to the Iranian missile attack, airlines are taking much longer routings. For example, the early morning Qatar Airways flight QR12 arrival at Doha today from London Heathrow flew southeast to Athens, over the eastern Mediterranean to Egypt, over the Sinai peninsula to the Red Sea, turning east to fly over…
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