Thousands of flights cancelled as world faces worst travel chaos since Covid pandemic

Thousands more flights were cancelled on Monday as the turmoil in global air travel caused by the US-Israel war on Iran continued, with hundreds of thousands of passengers already stranded.

Gulf airports and airlines have suspended all operations until at least 10.00 GMT on Tuesday.

Airline and travel share prices fell sharply after days of disruption, with Donald Trump indicating that the US military action could last another four weeks.

Some carriers and travel firms are offering refunds or free changes to those due to travel in the coming weeks. Major Middle Eastern airports, including Dubai – the world’s busiest international hub – closed for a third consecutive day amid the most acute aviation shock since the Covid pandemic paralysed the industry.

Flights across the Middle East have been cancelled, disrupting thousands of services so far, as international carriers continued to suspend their services.

By 10am, according to the analysts Cirium, at least 1,555 flights to the Middle East had been cancelled, although it warned that the figures were artificially low owing to limited data coming from Iran and the United Arab Emirates, where hundreds more flights were scheduled on Monday.

Cancellations most affected the Gulf carriers, all three of which now connect passengers worldwide via their hubs. Emirates, based in Dubai, and Etihad Airways, in Abu Dhabi, said flights to and from their hubs would not operate until late Tuesday morning, while Qatar Airways has suspended operations as long as Qatari airspace remains closed.

Almost 2,800 flights were cancelled on Saturday, and 3,156 cancelled on Sunday, according to the tracking platform FlightAware.

Some flights to Cyprus have also been affected, with easyJet cancelling three return services between Paphos and Larnaca and the UK on Monday after a drone hit the RAF base in Akrotiri. British Airways said it had cancelled Monday’s Larnaca service.

Airspace over Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Israel, Bahrain, the UAE and Qatar was still virtually empty as of Monday, according to the flight tracking website Flightradar24.

The impact has spread far beyond the Middle East, with passengers stranded from Bali to Frankfurt. Air India cancelled flights on Sunday departing from Delhi, Mumbai and Amritsar for big cities in Europe and North America.

As the conflict spread to Lebanon – with Israel carrying out airstrikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut after Iran-aligned Hezbollah launched rockets at Israel – much of the region’s airspace remained closed.

Crew and pilots are now scattered across the world, complicating the process of resuming flights whenever airspace reopens.

As many passengers struggled to find information on the status of planned journeys, gathering at some of the world’s busiest commercial airports amid widespread delays and cancellations, the uber-wealthy found an alternative route out of the Middle East.

“Saudi Arabia is the only real option for people who want to get out of the region right now,” Ameerh Naran, the chief executive of the private jet brokerage Vimana Private, told Semafor, putting the cost of private jets from Riyadh to Europe at up to $350,000 (£260,000).

The region and its airlines have become used to travel disruption over the past few years, but such a prolonged closure of the skies – more than 24 hours – and the shutdown of all three big Gulf transit hubs is unprecedented, analysts said.

Related: Oil prices rise as Iran war threatens shipping through strait of Hormuz

Shares in Tui, Europe’s largest travel company, dropped 7% in early trade, while the British Airways owner IAG was down 9%.

Tui said it would be contacting all customers due to travel to the Middle East in the coming week, while still making arrangements to bring people back from Dubai and Qatar. BA has told passengers due to fly out from London to the Gulf, Israel or Jordan until 15 March that they can delay travel free of charge. It has cancelled all flights to the Gulf until the end of Tuesday.

Up to 25,000 passengers could have flown on 74 flights to the Middle East today, according to Cirium. Some flights to Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Jordan have also been cancelled but Egypt flights are so far unaffected.

Shares in airlines including Lufthansa, Air France-KLM, Qantas and Singapore also all fell between 5% and 7%. Hotelier Accor and the cruise company Carnival also fell sharply. US airline shares dropped about 5% in pre-market trading as investors contemplated the impact of the Iran war on the aviation industry.

Carriers around the world face higher oil prices after Brent crude jumped by as much as 13% to hit $80 a barrel, with analysts predicting they could climb as high as $100.

“For everyone the main impact will come through oil prices, which will obviously take a bump upwards,” said the aviation adviser Bertrand Grabowski.

Some flights that have run have been rerouted to avoid closed or restricted airspace. Iranian and Iraqi overflight routes had grown more important since the Russia-Ukraine war forced airlines to avoid both countries’ airspace.

Middle East airspace closures are now squeezing airlines into narrower corridors, with fighting between Pakistan and Afghanistan adding a further risk, noted Ian Petchenik, the communications director at Flightradar24. “The risk of protracted disruption is the main concern from a commercial aviation perspective,” he said.

The Gulf is also a leading intersection for air cargo, putting further pressure on trade lanes on top of disruption at sea.

AP and Reuters contributed to this report