War in the Middle East: Dubai airport traffic collapsed in March

The Dubai airport saw a 66% drop in traffic in March 2026 compared to the previous year, as the United Arab Emirates faced strikes from Iran, according to official statistics published on Monday, May 4. The airport, previously the world’s second busiest for passengers behind Atlanta (USA), only hosted 2.5 million travelers during the month, after undergoing “a period of disruptions that constrained airspace capacity and flight schedules,” as stated in a release.

Throughout 2025, the airport had accommodated 95.2 million passengers and initially aimed for 99.5 million this year. “Now that UAE airspace has fully returned to normal, Dubai airports are taking decisive steps (…) to increase flight numbers in line with air corridor capacities in the region,” according to Abu Dhabi.

Since the first Israeli-American strikes on Iran on February 28, the Dubai International Airport has been targeted multiple times by drones, along with American military facilities in the Gulf, as well as civilian infrastructure in these petro-monarchies, from Kuwait to Oman. “The extraordinary events of recent weeks are unprecedented for an air hub of this magnitude,” noted Paul Griffiths, CEO of Dubai airports, in the release.

Gulf airports like Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Doha have built their economic model on connecting passengers, benefiting from their strategic location at the crossroads of routes to and from the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Oceania. The nearly paralyzed state of these facilities in the initial weeks of the conflict led to chaos in global air transport.