By Benjamin Katz
Minutes before an Iranian drone smashed into a fuel tank, sending a fiery explosion into the skies above Dubai International Airport, the wheels of an Emirates passenger plane en route to Beijing had just lifted from the runway.
The blast in the early hours of Monday morning forced two planes on approach to quickly divert and take up holding patterns. Twelve other flights had taken off in the 30 minutes before the attack. By midday, the airport was back up and running.
The incident is among the starkest examples of the dangers facing commercial airlines in the Middle East. Airlines have reinstated hundreds of flights a day even as drones and missiles have struck across the region.
"This is war, why are they flying in the path of missiles?" said Kourosh Doustshenas, whose partner was among 176 people killed when Iran accidentally shot down a passenger jet in January 2020.
Doustshenas isn't the only one asking. Pilots, security specialists and industry executives say they increasingly fear a similar catastrophe, citing the risk that a jet is hit by a hostile projectile or mistaken as an incoming threat by air-defense systems. Iran has repeatedly targeted civilian airports while jetliners sharing airspace with missiles is an obvious danger, they said.
At Dubai International Airport alone, at least 39 passenger planes have landed at or departed within five minutes on either side of a national warning of incoming fire, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of more than 8,700 flights and government notices between the start of the war and March 20.
At Abu Dhabi's hub, the Journal identified six instances within the same window, and recorded 12 at Sharjah airport, located about 30 kilometers northeast of Dubai. When assessed 10 minutes on either side of a warning, the total number of planes across all three airports more than doubles to 130.
The figures don't account for approaching aircraft that were diverted or strikes that weren't accompanied by official online alerts from the United Arab Emirates' national emergency authority. Many of the missile and drone attacks aren't flagged in official warnings, including the March 16 hit on the Dubai fuel tank.
No commercial planes have been downed since the start of the Iran war. However, at least five aircraft parked at airports have sustained damage from Iranian attacks. Two of those -- including an Emirates A380 and a smaller Saudia A321 -- were hit while at Dubai International early in the conflict, according to people familiar with the incidents.
The other three were private jets struck this past week by debris from ballistic missiles intercepted above Israel's Ben Gurion Airport. Israel confirmed the damage and responded by reducing flights and capping passenger numbers on some departures.
More than double the number of drones and missiles has been fired into U.A.E. airspace than any other nation in the region, according to Osprey Flight Solutions, an aviation-security specialist. The U.A.E. has at most two minutes to react to a ballistic missile fired from Iran, and 15 minutes for a drone, Osprey says.
The country's airlines are nevertheless quickly restoring schedules. Over the past two weeks, Emirates has operated about 300 flights a day, roughly 60% of its prewar capacity. Combined with Etihad, Flydubai and AirArabia, Emirati carriers have flown more than 11,000 trips since the conflict started, according to data from Flightradar24.
Aviation is an important economic driver for the U.A.E., with Emirates -- the world's busiest airline by international traffic -- its most recognized brand, having turned Dubai into a major hub over 40 years.
To mitigate risks, the U.A.E. has outlined specific flight corridors for pilots and primed air-traffic controllers to rapidly divert aircraft. Jet fighters have also been deployed to protect jetliners against incoming drones, people familiar with the strategy said.
Airlines in the region have said they are giving priority to safety and actively engaging with governments and intelligence agencies.
"We do not operate any flight unless it has been fully assessed and approved as safe," a spokeswoman for Abu Dhabi-based Etihad said in a statement, citing "strong regulatory oversight and operational discipline" in the wider region.
The U.A.E.'s Ministry of Foreign Affairs didn't respond to requests for comment.
Osprey currently holds an "extreme risk" warning -- its highest level -- for much of the active airspace in the Gulf, including in the U.A.E., parts of Saudi Arabia and Israel. That matches the rating for Ukraine and western Russia, where in late 2024 an Azerbaijani passenger plane was accidentally shot out of the sky.
"Even flying with contingencies, you're exposing aircraft, passengers and crew to a potential catastrophic event," Matt Borie, Osprey's chief intelligence officer, said. "What happens tomorrow if a plane is hit, would anybody be like, 'How could that have happened?'"
After the fuel tank strike on Mar. 16, Dubai -- one of seven emirates and the UAE's commercial hub -- has sought to reassure passengers, declaring flights in and out of its airports to be safe.
"The ability to detect and respond to threats as they've unfolded has been very, very effective and efficient," Dubai Airports Chief Executive Paul Griffiths told CNN in an interview later promoted by the emirate on social media. Over a million passengers have transited the emirate's airports since the start of the conflict, he said.
Most foreign airlines have halted flights across the Middle East. Delta Air Lines, British Airways and Cathay Pacific are among carriers that in recent days have extended cancellations through the coming months.
While the aviation industry has exacting safety standards for aircraft design and certification, there isn't an international agreement on what qualifies as safe when flying in conflict zones.
"Any designer of an aircraft knows the target for achieving safety," said Mario Brito, a professor in risk sciences at the University of Southampton in the U.K., who has advised airlines including Emirates. "In aviation security, there isn't one."
Airlines decide for themselves whether it is safe to fly, an assessment typically based on a hodgepodge of government intelligence, regulatory advice and private-security consultants. That is then weighed against the cost of a potential disaster -- including compensation for families and reputational damage -- and the lost revenue from canceling, Brito said.
The return to flying has created tensions between airlines and crew. Pilots, who are ultimately responsible for an aircraft and those onboard, are growing more worried about flying in the Middle East, according to interviews with crew members and union groups.
Some of those fears were captured in a voice memo circulated among pilots. In the recording, shared with the Journal, a pilot describes being turned away from multiple airports on the first day of the war. He landed his aircraft with just 30 minutes worth of fuel in the tank.
"We have substantive concerns with regard to the security situation," Paul Reuter, vice president of the European Cockpit Association, said in a statement. As more flights return, "the potential for airliners being targeted either willfully or by error will increase dramatically," he said.
Some crew at European airlines have triggered so-called "fear clauses," which gives crew the option not to fly if they aren't comfortable, union officials and airline staff said. Others at airlines that don't have that arrangement have called in sick to avoid flying.
After Iran's accidental downing of Ukrainian Airlines PS752 in 2020, families of those who died have been pressing the International Civil Aviation Organization to set standards restricting flights in conflict zones. Those rules haven't materialized.
In a case brought by the families of 20 of the passengers, a Canadian judge ruled in 2024 that the airline was liable for the tragedy even though Iranian forces fired the missile that downed the jet. Many of those aboard were Canadian, trying to get home via Ukraine.
In the hours before that flight departed, Doustshenas and his fiancée, Forough Khadem, exchanged messages about a recent strike on a U.S. military base in Iraq and whether it was safe to fly. Ultimately, he told her that if the airline was prepared to, it must be safe.
"I'll never forgive myself," he said.
Write to Benjamin Katz at ben.katz@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 21, 2026 21:00 ET (01:00 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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