Both Etihad Airways and Emirates are advising passengers that some services now take up to two hours longer than usual as jets skirt closed or high-risk sectors over the Gulf and northern Arabian Sea. An updated notice on Etihad’s public flight-status page on 29 March explains that the carrier continues to operate a "limited" but expanding schedule, with selected routes flown on “adjusted routings as a precautionary measure.” While airports in Abu Dhabi and Dubai remain fully operational, east-bound flights to India and Southeast Asia are currently routed south of Iranian FIRs, adding fuel stops or prompting equipment swaps from narrow-body to wide-body aircraft. West-bound services to Europe are climbing higher and further north to avoid restricted Iraqi airspace, increasing block times and crew costs. For corporate travel buyers, the operational reality is that the published timetable may not reflect gate-to-gate journey times. This has knock-on effects for duty-of-care tracking, connection protection and travel-time thresholds embedded in many mobility policies. Companies are recalibrating per-diem allowances and permitting premium-economy upgrades on sectors now exceeding eight hours. Travel-management companies recommend building in at least a four-hour buffer for onward connections and avoiding same-day meetings. Where project deadlines allow, some multinationals are switching to virtual kick-off sessions until routings stabilise. Mobility teams should monitor flight-status pages daily and subscribe to airline SMS alerts so that assignees are not stranded mid-journey. Industry analysts caution that even if the regional security picture improves, it may take several weeks for over-flight approvals to revert to pre-February patterns, as insurers reassess risk ratings and carriers negotiate slots on preferred corridors.
Source: Etihad Airways
