Everything was normal in the beginning of Monday night for pilots flying with thousands of passengers from Indian airports, but as soon as they reached half away, Iran stained ballistic missiles on an American airbase in Qatar, forcing these flights to return.
Caption: These flights left from Mumbai, Hyderabad, Varanasi, Amritsar, Kannur, Pune, Chennai, Delhi, Lucknow and Mangaluru.
India Today’s Open-SUS Intelligence (Osint) team after reviewing flight data found that most aircraft which were flying over the Arabian Sea returned between 10 pm and 11 pm.
According to data from the flight tracking firm Flightradar24, at least 13 flights – which were operated by Indian airlines – were either brought back to their original airport or brought to the nearest safe airports.
IndiGo, Air India, Air India Express and Spicejet were included in those affected airlines. These flights were going to the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Oman.
IndiGo’s Hyderabad-Iladhabi flight iG1407 had to take a U-turn from the Gulf region (Gulf of Oman) around 10:50 pm and was diverted to Surat. At the same time, the flight from Varanasi to Sharjah from Varanasi from Varanasi kept hovering in a circle for some time and then descended to her destination.
Similarly, three flights from Kuwait from Kuwait towards Delhi, Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram also had to return to Kuwait. Jazeera’s flight Jzr405 had crossed Qatar, but took a U-turn at 10:19 Indian time.
Many international airlines also faced diversion and had to make an emergency landing at many airports in India, only then they could go towards the Gulf or Europe. These included companies like Etihad, Emirates and FlyDubai.
International flights going from cities like Manila, Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi and Fuket towards West Asia and Europe also had to change their way. Many of them had to land at the airports of India and Southeast Asia – Hyderabad, Delhi, Mumbai, Cochin, Bengaluru, Chennai, Singapore and Bahrain. Some had to cancel their flight and return.
For example, the nearly eight -hour long flight from Manila to Doha had to change the way to Bangalore Airport. At the same time, another flight going from New Delhi to Dubai had to return to Delhi.
Pre -planned attack
Iran fired about six missiles on the US’s largest airbase al -Udid (Al Udeid) located in Qatar on Monday night. The attack was carried out by the US in response to the bombing of Iran’s three major nuclear bases.
A few hours before the missile attack, several Gulf countries, including Qatar, Bahrain, Iraq and UAE, temporarily shut down their airspace. Qatar had completely suspended all air flights.
Aviation analysis company Cirium said that on Monday, about two dozen flights going towards Doha had to be diverted, most of which were operated by Qatar Airways. Apart from this, many flights going towards Dubai also had to change the way.
These sudden return and diversion have caused heavy financial and operational losses to the airlines, as they were forced to choose an alternative avenues to avoid any possible threat or attack.
Since the airspace of Russia and Ukraine is closed for most airlines due to the years of war on the years, the route of the Middle East has become more important for flights between Europe and Asia. Due to missiles and airstrikes that have been released for the last 10 days, the airlines have now started resorting to the North of the Caspian Sea or the southern route of Egypt and Saudi Arabia.