On Saturday, February 28th, a friend of mine was transiting through Abu Dhabi via Etihad Airways en route home to Nairobi from a work-related trip in Malaysia. As she relaxed and sipped on a much needed cup of coffee, mentally preparing herself for a six hour transit session, Operation Eric Fury was launched. The United Arab Emirates was unwittingly dragged into a war and its entire airspace was closed immediately. My friend’s status changed from traveller to statistic, trapped in Abu Dhabi with tens of thousands of other travellers.

Air travel has always been the great connector, until war reminds us that geography is destiny and missiles don’t care about frequent flyer miles. When the first Gulf War started in 1991 codenamed Operation Desert Storm, Emirates airline was barely six years old, a plucky upstart with a handful of aircraft and ambitions bigger than its fleet. Qatar Airways didn’t even exist yet, it would only launch in 1994. Essentially, the Gulf as an aviation hub was not even in its embryonic stage and in those days London, Frankfurt and Paris still ruled as the transit hubs of choice for global travel. During Desert Storm, the impact on aviation was significant but contained. Western carriers rerouted around Iraq and Kuwait, insurance premiums skyrocketed, and nervous passengers avoided the region altogether.

Fast forward to 2026, and the Gulf is no longer a regional sideshow, it’s the main stage. Emirates, Qatar Airways, and Etihad have transformed Dubai, Doha, and Abu Dhabi into the beating heart of global aviation. In the year 2024, Doha, Qatar’s Hamad International welcomed 52.7 million passengers. In the same year, the emirate of Dubai’s international airport handled 92.3 million passengers, which was more than the population of Germany. The emirate of Abu Dhabi’s airport managed 29.4 million passengers in 2024 cementing the UAE’s collective dominance at 121.7 million passengers and the 3 airports at about 174 million passengers annually.

Bearing in mind that comparison is the thief of joy, one must put these numbers into an African perspective.  Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International is on record as having 8.93 million passengers annually while Addis Ababa’s Bole airport had 12 million passengers in the same period. Respectable regionally, but a rounding error compared to Gulf giants.

So, when Iran unleashed missiles aimed at Qatar and the UAE, it wasn’t just a regional fever, it triggered a global aviation cardiac arrest. Airspace closures in Doha and Dubai brought transit traffic to a standstill. Flights from Sydney to London, Mumbai to New York, Nairobi to Paris, all suddenly stranded or rerouted. The Gulf hubs that once symbolized seamless connectivity became chaotic scenes of grounded aircraft and thousands of stranded passengers. Business continuity planning and crisis management scenarios went into full effect. Three years ago, I was transiting through Dubai and the airport had been shut down due to a rare desert phenomenon called rain generated flooding. All the passenger handling airport staff, to a man, fled the scene leaving screaming passengers frustrated, despondent and in various stages of grief as we came to terms with the fact that we had pretty much been abandoned. I cannot imagine what Dubai looked like on February 28th, actually scratch that, I can. It was probably close to a rugby pitch, with haunting tunes of stranded globalization playing on the speakers.

In 1991, governments mostly advised citizens to avoid the Gulf. Evacuations were limited, and airlines bore the brunt of passenger management. In 2026, governments have had to act like emergency travel agencies. India airlifted thousands of stranded citizens from Dubai. European governments scrambled to reroute nationals stuck in Doha while hotels in Dubai and Doha were requisitioned by their governments to house passengers. It was less about “customer service” and more about “disaster relief.”

The lesson? Global aviation has become dangerously dependent on a handful of Middle Eastern hubs. All the European premier football club sponsorships, as well as Formula One, cricket and other high eyeball sports sponsorships have paid off. Emirates, Qatar and Etihad are now top-of-mind airlines for the global traveller. When missiles fly, the ripple effect is not just regional, it’s planetary. Passengers in Johannesburg, Singapore, or São Paulo who had planned to transit through the Middle East have found themselves stranded in those cities because Tehran decided to lob hardware at Doha.

Air travel, once the symbol of globalization, is now the hostage of geopolitics. And while governments today are far more proactive in rescuing stranded travellers than they were in 1991, the fact remains: when the Gulf sneezes, the world catches a cold. My friend eventually got a flight out of Abu Dhabi last Thursday and landed safely in Nairobi, six days after her original date of travel. Operation Desert Storm showed us that war could inconvenience aviation. Operation Epic Fury is showing us that war can paralyze it.  And peace, like legroom, is never guaranteed.

X: @carolmusyoka

The Nitpicker Podcast