Airline staff concerned about the safety of Middle East routes in the face of instability
There is concern among pilots and crew of a number of airlines about the insecurity they face on routes crossing the Middle East in the face of conflict in the region.
In late September, an experienced pilot for European low-cost airline Wizz Air was anxious when he learned that his plane would be flying over Iraq at night amid rising tensions between neighbours Iran and Israel.
The pilot decided to challenge the decision, as just a week earlier the airline had deemed the route unsafe. In response, Wizz Air's flight operations team told him that the air route was now considered safe and that he had to fly, without further explanation, the pilot said.
‘I was not very happy with that,’ the pilot, who requested anonymity for fear of losing his job, told Reuters. Days later, Iraq closed its airspace when Iran fired missiles on October 1 at Israel. ‘That confirmed my suspicion that it was not safe.’
In response to Reuters' questions, Wizz Air said safety was its top priority and that it had carried out detailed risk assessments before resuming flights over Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries.
Reuters spoke to four pilots, three cabin crew, three flight safety experts and two airline executives about growing safety concerns in the European airline industry due to rising tensions in the Middle East following Hamas' attack on Israel in October 2023, which sparked the war in Gaza.
The Middle East is a key air corridor for planes heading to India, Southeast Asia and Australia, with 1,400 flights to and from Europe passing through it daily last year, Eurocontrol data show.
The debate about flight safety over the region is taking place in Europe largely because pilots there are protected by trade unions, unlike in other parts of the world.
‘No one should be forced to work in such a dangerous environment and no commercial interests should take precedence over the safety and welfare of those on board,’ reads a letter to EASA and the European Commission from the Romanian flight crew union FPU Romania, dated 26 August.
In other letters, staff called on airlines to be more transparent in their route decisions and demanded the right to refuse to fly on a dangerous route.
There have been no fatalities or accidents involving commercial aviation related to escalating tensions in the Middle East since war broke out in Gaza last year.
Air France opened an internal investigation after one of its commercial aircraft flew over Iraq on 1 October during Tehran's missile attack on Israel. On that occasion, airlines scrambled to divert dozens of planes heading for the affected areas in the Middle East.
Ongoing tensions between Israel and Iran and the abrupt overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad by Syrian rebels at the weekend have raised fears of increased insecurity in the region.
The use of missiles in the region has rekindled memories of the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014 and Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752 en route from Tehran in 2020.
Being accidentally shot down in the chaos of war is the main concern, three pilots and two air safety experts told Reuters, along with the risk of an emergency landing.
Some European airlines, including Lufthansa and KLM, allow crew to opt out of travel on routes they consider unsafe, but others, such as Wizz Air, Ryanair and airBaltic, do not.
Ryanair, which flew intermittently to Jordan and Israel until September, said it makes safety decisions based on EASA guidelines.
Critical areas
Some private jets are avoiding the most critical areas.
‘Right now, my no-go areas would be the hotspots: Libya, Israel, Iran, simply because they're involved in all that,’ said Andy Spencer, a Singapore-based pilot who flies private jets and previously worked as an airline pilot.
Spencer, who has two decades of experience and flies regularly in the Middle East, said that on a recent flight from Manila to Cuba, he flew from Dubai over Egypt and north through Malta before refuelling in Morocco to bypass Libyan and Israeli airspace.
EASA, regarded by industry experts as the toughest regional safety regulator, issues public bulletins on how to fly safely over conflict zones.
But these are not mandatory and each airline decides where to fly based on a patchwork of government advisories, external security advisors, internal security teams and information sharing between airlines, leading to divergent policies.
This information is not normally shared with staff.
The opacity has sown fear and mistrust among pilots, cabin crew and passengers, who wonder if their airline has overlooked something that airlines in other countries do know, said Otjan de Bruijn, former head of the European pilots' union European Cockpit Association and a KLM pilot.
‘The more information pilots are given, the more informed the decision they can make,’ said Spencer, who is also an operations specialist at flight advisory body OPSGROUP, which provides independent operational advice to the aviation industry.
When Gulf carriers such as Etihad, Emirates or Flydubai suddenly stop flying over Iran or Iraq, the industry sees it as a reliable indicator of risk, pilots and security sources said, as these airlines may have access to detailed information from their governments.
Flydubai told Reuters it operates within airspace and airways in the region that are approved by Dubai's General Civil Aviation Authority. Emirates said it continuously monitors all routes, adjusting them as necessary and would never operate a flight unless it was safe to do so. Etihad said it only operates through approved airspace.
Passenger rights groups are also calling for passengers to be given more information.
‘If passengers refuse to fly over conflict zones, airlines would be reluctant to continue those flights,’ said Paul Hudson, director of the US passenger group Flyers Rights. ‘And passengers who take those flights will do so informed of the risks.’