Dubai International Airport

Opened in 1960 as a desert airstrip, Dubai International grew into a global transfer mega-hub under the stewardship of Dubai and Emirates Airline. Its two runways and three terminals handled 89 million passengers in 2024, ranking it first globally for international traffic. Terminal 3 is the exclusive home of Emirates, the anchor carrier accounting for the majority of seats and connections.

Dubai International Airport was shut down for seven hours on 17 March 2026 after a drone struck a fuel tank near its perimeter, diverting hundreds of flights and stranding tens of thousands of passengers. The UAE also closed its entire airspace overnight on 16-17 March for approximately two hours as part of a broader domestic security response, with the airport operating on limited schedules throughout the conflict period. A missile struck a civilian vehicle in Abu Dhabi that same week, compounding alarm and prompting airlines to extend cancellations across the region.

The closure exposed a structural weakness in Gulf aviation: ultra-centralised hubs with no redundant sister airports nearby. Iran's campaign of drone and missile attrition against UAE infrastructure has forced insurers and airlines to reprice Gulf overflights and reconsider route resilience assumptions that held for decades. A third wave of drones over Saudi Arabia the following week confirmed the wider Gulf is now a contested airspace.