Deadly attacks on Saudi Arabia's second-busiest airport over the past week are highlighting how conflicts in the Middle East are upending air travel on a larger scale.
Aviation is increasingly in the middle of these sprawling clashes as threats and outright attacks have forced airlines to quickly cancel flights throughout the Middle East for days, weeks and, in some cases, months. Some carriers might redeploy planes that would be going to some Middle East destinations like Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Doha, Qatar, to other locations altogether.
"It's a new paradigm. Civil aviation is being directly targeted and it has not been the case in the last couple of decades," said Mark Zee, founder of OpsGroup, an independent aviation safety group whose members include pilots, dispatchers, airline employees and others.
The Saudi airport attacks, claimed by Yemen's Iran-backed Houthis, were the deadliest in the country in more than a decade. Over the weekend, at least 13 people were killed and more than 300 injured when a projectile hit terminals at King Khalid International Airport in the Saudi capital Riyadh, officials said. Other attacks have included drones.
"Historically, airport security is focused on preventing unauthorized access to aircraft and the airport, not defending airspace," said Jeff Price, a professor at the Metropolitan State University of Denver's Department of Aviation and Aerospace Science and an airport management consultant.