Middle East Airspace Update: No Ceasefire, Kuwait Still Closed, Three Saudi Airports Shut After Houthi Attacks

As of August 25, 2026, fighting between the United States and Iran has eased but no ceasefire has been established, and Middle East airspace remains operationally complex for international operators. Kuwait is closed to overflights until October 2, with only flights arriving at or departing from OKKK/Kuwait permitted, and only with prior approval, eliminating direct central routing through the region. Three airports in southern Saudi Arabia — OEAB/Abha, OEGN/Jizan, and OENG/Najran — remain closed following recent Houthi attacks, though the OEJD/Jeddah FIR stays open and the main southern bypass route is unaffected.

On August 22, Israel carried out a drone strike near Damascus, following an August 18 strike on a military airbase in northwest Syria. The OSTT/Damascus FIR remains open, though Israeli strikes continue periodically. On August 18, the UAE reported detecting two ballistic missiles launched from Iran; both fell into the sea, with one landing inside UAE territorial waters, and no airspace closure or routing change followed.

EASA advises operators to avoid Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE, and the Gulf of Oman west of 58°E, with these warnings valid until August 31. Syria and Yemen remain subject to separate long-standing conflict zone information bulletins. A separate Information Note covers Israel, Oman, and Saudi Arabia, advising operators to take potential risk into account rather than issuing an outright avoid recommendation. Iran is officially open to overflights but limited to specific routes above FL285, with patchy radar coverage and ongoing GPS interference, and most foreign operators continue to avoid it. Qatar, the UAE, Bahrain, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Oman remain open, each with varying flow restrictions and GPS jamming or spoofing issues, and heavy ATC congestion is being reported in the OEJD/Jeddah FIR as traffic concentrates on the southern bypass route via Egypt and Saudi Arabia. For Europe-Asia traffic, two routing options remain: south via Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Oman/UAE, or north via the Caucasus and Afghanistan, where the OAKX/Kabul FIR remains Class G with no normal ATS service, requiring crews to use published contingency routes and TIBA procedures. GPS jamming and spoofing continue across the region, with multiple reports of complete GPS loss on arrival and departure, and interference extending into neighbouring FIRs.

This is a region where overflight availability changes faster than published charts, so dispatch and flight planning teams have to treat routing as a day-of-flight decision rather than a fixed corridor. The closures in Kuwait and southern Saudi Arabia, layered onto EASA's avoid list and ongoing GPS interference, push traffic onto a narrowing set of paths, which is exactly why the Jeddah FIR is now reporting heavy congestion.

The pattern shows how a conflict zone's operational risk spreads beyond the country under attack: Kabul's Class G airspace and TIBA-only procedures, GPS jamming crossing into neighbouring FIRs, and Gulf states maintaining open status while still carrying flow restrictions all mean that a route can be technically legal and still degraded. Operators weighing the northern Caucasus-Afghanistan option against the southern Egypt-Saudi-Oman/UAE option are trading congestion risk against reduced ATS coverage and navigation reliability.

The next fixed point is August 31, when the current EASA warnings for the Gulf, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, and Lebanon expire and are due for renewal or revision, and October 2, when Kuwait's overflight closure is scheduled to lift. Whether US-Iran fighting settles into a firmer ceasefire before either date will shape whether these restrictions are extended or eased.