PARIS - The biggest disruption to global air transport since the Covid pandemic snarled travel for a second day on Sunday, with thousands of flights affected and busy Gulf hubs including Dubai and Doha shuttered as Iran lashed out after US-Israeli strikes.
Passengers were stranded around the world as airlines sought to reroute around the Middle East, where most countries had slammed their airspace shut as Iran launched retaliatory strikes on the glittering Gulf cities.
Tehran hit both the Dubai International Airport, the world's busiest for international traffic, and Kuwait's main airport during its retaliation one day earlier.
Iran, Iraq, Israel, Syria, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates had all announced at least partial closures of their skies.
"There haven't been any other crises of this magnitude since Covid," Didier Brechemier, an expert at business consultancy Roland Berger, told AFP.
Even Russia's invasion of Ukraine did not affect the major air hubs of the Middle East through which travellers to destinations in much of Asia almost always transit, he said.
Aviation analytics firm Cirium said more than 1,500 flights to the Middle East were cancelled Sunday, more than 40 percent of scheduled traffic.
Flight tracking website FlightAware said more than 2,700 flights had been cancelled globally and more than 12,300 delayed as of 1720 GMT Sunday.
The costs are "already amounting to hundreds of millions of euros in losses for air transport," Didier Arino, CEO of the consulting firm Protourisme, said.
Countries including France and Thailand have said they are looking at evacuating citizens from the Middle East.
Patrice Caradec, president of the French Association of Tour Operators (SETO), told AFP that the goal now is to establish "air bridges" via alternative hubs like Istanbul.
Arino said Tehran's attacks and the impact on air travel dealt a blow to the "soft power" of the Gulf monarchies.
"What they sell is the security of property and people," he told AFP.
"Dubai was often talked about a bit like Switzerland, so this inevitably tarnishes that image."