The traffic at Dubai Airport dropped by 66% in March 2026 compared to the previous year, during the time when the United Arab Emirates faced strikes from Iran, according to official statistics released on Monday, May 4. The airport, which was the world’s second busiest in terms of passenger traffic before the war, welcomed only 2.5 million travelers in the month, after experiencing “a period of disruption that constrained air space capacity and flight schedules,” as stated in a press release.
In 2025, the airport had accommodated 95.2 million passengers and initially aimed for 99.5 million this year. “Now that the UAE airspace has fully returned to normal, Dubai airports are taking decisive measures… to increase flight numbers in line with air corridor capacities in the region,” Abu Dhabi reported.
Since the initial Israeli-American strikes on Iran on February 28, Dubai International Airport has been targeted several times by drones, along with American military installations in the Gulf, as well as civilian infrastructure in these petro-monarchies, Kuwait, and Oman. “The extraordinary events of recent weeks are unprecedented for an air hub of such importance,” noted Dubai Airports CEO Paul Griffiths in the press release.
Gulf airports like Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Doha have relied on passenger connections, benefitting from their position as crucial links to and from the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Oceania. The near-paralysis of these facilities in the initial weeks of the conflict caused chaos in global air transport.
