On March 1, Britain woke up to the biggest dramatic change in its citizens’ freedom of movement since the Covid-19 border controls. After U.S.-Israeli raids within Iran led to missile attacks in response, Iran, Israel, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Syria, and the United Arab Emirates all closed their skies overnight. According to Reuters, more than 3,400 flights were canceled and hundreds of thousands of people were redirected because Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Doha—three of the busiest transit hubs in the world—stopped operating.
The UK Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (FCDO) says that some 76,000 British citizens are now living in the impacted jurisdictions, with two-thirds of them being tourists in the UAE. Ministers have told defense officials to make plans for an aided departure operation that they privately call “Afghanistan-scale, but by air and sea instead of land.”
British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, and other commercial airlines have stopped flying to Tel Aviv, Bahrain, and Amman. Flights to India, Southeast Asia, and Australia are now going through Turkey and Central Asia, which adds up to five hours to the trip.
Analysts in the travel sector warn that the closures might cost UK airlines more than £35 million a day in lost revenue and extra fuel costs for rerouting flights. John Strickland of JLS Consulting said that rerouting wide-body planes over Iranian airspace makes it necessary to make more technical stops, hire more crew, and pay passengers under UK261. Risk management guidelines have been put into place by corporate travel managers, who are telling assignees to stay away from the Gulf for at least a week.
People in the UK who have to change airports suddenly have a lot of queries about transit permits. VisaHQ, an online service, can instantly tell you if you need documents for a same-day connection in Istanbul or Addis Ababa, for example, and can process e-visas for dozens of other destinations in only a few hours.
People who want to travel can find out what they need or apply at https://www.visahq.com/united-kingdom/. This saves HR teams from having to rush about at the last minute.
Tour companies say that thousands of British visitors can’t leave Dubai. Hotels are giving lower prices for passengers in trouble, but insurance coverage varies.
The FCDO is telling people to stay in their homes and let the government know where they are through the site. If evacuation flights are needed, they will probably leave from Muscat or Kuwait City once humanitarian corridors are set up.
Employers with workers in free zones throughout the Gulf should quickly evaluate their duty-of-care duties and update their crisis communication trees.
For people who work in mobility, this episode shows how weak global routing assumptions are. Companies that send a lot of people through Gulf hubs should plan for other gateways (including Istanbul, Addis Ababa, and Singapore) and make sure that relocation providers have flexible ticket inventories.
In the long run, the crisis could speed up the UK–Asia linkages moving away from the Middle East and toward Central Asia and Africa. This could change how people travel for business in the future.
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