With the Israel-Iran conflict in its sixth week, Indian airlines are recalibrating Middle-East operations almost daily. On 4 April Air India and its low-cost subsidiary Air India Express published an emergency timetable of 42 flights—16 scheduled services and 26 ad-hoc rotations—to keep essential corridors open while neighbouring airspaces remain volatile.
![Indian Carriers Issue Special Schedules and Advisories as West Asia Airspace Crisis Persists]()
Amid shifting flight plans, passengers should also double-check that their travel documents are up to date. VisaHQ’s India portal (https://www.visahq.com/india/) lets travellers instantly verify entry requirements and submit visa applications for destinations such as the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Oman, ensuring paperwork doesn’t become another last-minute hurdle when itineraries change with little warning.
A bulk of the extra-section flights target the United Arab Emirates, where stranded migrant workers and business travellers have been lobbying for additional capacity. Routes to Jeddah and Riyadh operate normally, but services to Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and Tel Aviv are suspended until further notice. Passengers on cancelled sectors may rebook without penalty or claim full refunds; the carrier’s WhatsApp bot ‘Tia’ is handling thousands of change requests. IndiGo, India’s largest domestic airline, released its own 4 April advisory, confirming a skeleton schedule to select Gulf cities and urging travellers to verify status before heading to the airport. Emirates and Etihad meanwhile resumed limited departures from Dubai and Abu Dhabi, but are offering open-ended rebooking through 31 October for tickets issued before 30 April. The dynamic scheduling underscores the new reality for mobility managers: contingency planning must allow for rolling NOTAMs, drone-attack risk assessments and rapid re-routing over Oman or the Arabian Sea. Companies with project teams in the Gulf are advising staff to maintain 48-hour travel buffers and to use airline apps that push real-time gate changes. Indian civil-aviation authorities continue daily reviews with carriers and insurers. While airfares on unaffected routes such as Muscat–Mumbai remain stable, seats on remaining Dubai frequencies have spiked 35 % in a week. Travel buyers should lock in critical journeys early and ensure tickets carry flexible conditions.
Amid shifting flight plans, passengers should also double-check that their travel documents are up to date. VisaHQ’s India portal (https://www.visahq.com/india/) lets travellers instantly verify entry requirements and submit visa applications for destinations such as the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Oman, ensuring paperwork doesn’t become another last-minute hurdle when itineraries change with little warning.
A bulk of the extra-section flights target the United Arab Emirates, where stranded migrant workers and business travellers have been lobbying for additional capacity. Routes to Jeddah and Riyadh operate normally, but services to Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and Tel Aviv are suspended until further notice. Passengers on cancelled sectors may rebook without penalty or claim full refunds; the carrier’s WhatsApp bot ‘Tia’ is handling thousands of change requests. IndiGo, India’s largest domestic airline, released its own 4 April advisory, confirming a skeleton schedule to select Gulf cities and urging travellers to verify status before heading to the airport. Emirates and Etihad meanwhile resumed limited departures from Dubai and Abu Dhabi, but are offering open-ended rebooking through 31 October for tickets issued before 30 April. The dynamic scheduling underscores the new reality for mobility managers: contingency planning must allow for rolling NOTAMs, drone-attack risk assessments and rapid re-routing over Oman or the Arabian Sea. Companies with project teams in the Gulf are advising staff to maintain 48-hour travel buffers and to use airline apps that push real-time gate changes. Indian civil-aviation authorities continue daily reviews with carriers and insurers. While airfares on unaffected routes such as Muscat–Mumbai remain stable, seats on remaining Dubai frequencies have spiked 35 % in a week. Travel buyers should lock in critical journeys early and ensure tickets carry flexible conditions.
