Airline Cancels And Diverts Flight Routes To Avoid Middle East Air Areas

Bad International Airport Tehran. (Wikimedia Commons/Shahram Sharifi)

JAKARTA - Global air traffic was disrupted following an Israeli attack on Iran on Friday, with several major airlines suspending flights to and from locations in the Middle East, diverting their plane routes to evade most of the region's airspace.

The airspace over Iran and Israel as well as Jordan, Syria, and Iraq were vacated from commercial flights on Friday, according to flight tracking site Flightradar24.

Israel, Iran, and Jordan closed their airspace after the attack, while Iran suspended all domestic and international flights, state-affiliated Fars news agency reported on Friday, citing civil aviation authorities, as reported by CNN June 13.

Airlanggabad Airport in Tehran, Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, and Queen Alia International Airport in Amman were all closed on Friday.

As the attack on Iran last night, several flights were diverted or returned to their origins. Air India said on X its more than a dozen flights were affected "due to the situation that emerged in Iran," including routes from New York, London, Vancouver and Washington.

One Delta Air Lines flight from John F. Kennedy New York Airport to Tel Aviv flew for eight hours just to end up back at your flight, according to Flightradar24.

Meanwhile, Israeli airlines El Al, Israir and Arkia evacuated their planes from Israel as the country prepared for retaliation from Iran, Reuters reported.

Data in Flightradar24 showed several planes leaving Tel Aviv airport on Friday morning, some of them heading to nearby Cyprus. Hermes, the operator of Cyprus airport, said 32 flights from the Middle East had been diverted to Larnaca and Paphos airports until Friday morning.

Throughout Friday, airlines after airlines announced they would suspend flights to and from various cities in the region. About 650 flights to and from Europe were canceled until Friday, according to Reuters citing Eurocontrol, an intergovernmental organization that helps manage European airspace. The organization said some 1,800 flights across the continent had been completely affected.

German airline Lufthansa said flights to Tehran and Tel Aviv had been suspended until July 31, and flights to Amman, Beirut, and Erbil in Iraq's Kurdistan until June 20.

Emirates, one of the main airlines of the United Arab Emirates, said it had canceled its flights to and from Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Iran until Sunday.

Meanwhile, Air France told CNN in a statement it suspended flights to Tel Aviv until further notice.

Dutch airline KLM said on its website it would not fly to Tel Aviv until at least July 1.

Delta Air Lines initially warned of a trip to, from, or through Tel Aviv may be affected by June 30. But on Friday the airline said it would temporarily suspend flights betweenELAviv and Tel Aviv until August 31.

Qatar Airways has " temporarily canceled flights to Iran and Iraq," the airline said in a statement.

Three major airports in Iran, including in the capital Tehran, and five airports in Iraq, including its capital Baghdad, have been affected, the airline said.