Flight to nowhere: Qantas jet to Paris turns back after 15 hours in the air due to Iran-Israel conflict

The crisis in West Asia led passengers of a Paris-bound Qantas Airways to fly for 15 hours only to be back in Australia from where they started their journey.

The airplane, a Boeing 787 jet, departed from Perth for a long-haul 17-hour journey to Paris at 7.35 pm local time on Monday. It was not until the plane reached the Indian airspace that the crew was told about the shut airspace over West Asia, forcing the plane to turn back. The plane landed back safely in Australia at 11 am local time on Tuesday.

Qantas Airways said in a statement that another one of its planes bound for London was affected due to the airspace closure and was diverted to Singapore.

Passengers from both flights will be accommodated overnight, with the diversions also impacting the return flights from London and Paris. Qantas said it is exploring options to assist affected travellers.

How flights have been affected globally

Airlines  scrambled to cancel flights and reroute planes after several West Asian nations closed their countries’ airspace temporarily as  Iran  attacked the Al Udeid US military base in Doha, the latest  upheaval  to air travel in a normally busy region.

The conflict cut off major flight routes to typically resilient aviation hubs such as Dubai, with the world’s busiest international airport, and  Qatar’s capital of Doha. The  usually busy airspace stretching from  Iran  and Iraq to the Mediterranean resembles a ghost town, devoid of commercial air traffic due to the airspace closures and safety concerns.

According to aviation analytics company Cirium, about two dozen flights to Doha, mostly from  Qatar  Airways, were diverted on Monday, and about a handful of flights to Dubai were diverted due to the airspace closures.

Is the situation back to normal now?

By Tuesday, however, most countries reopened their airspace. Israel and Iran have agreed to reach a ceasefire brokered by the US, effectively meaning that hostilities along the border would come to a halt now. However, Israel has claimed that Iran has violated the ceasefire.

Iraq reopened its airspace Tuesday, 12 days after closing it amid the Iran-Israel war, aviation authorities said.

The Iraqi Civil Aviation Authority announced the “reopening of Iraqi airspace to international air traffic, following a comprehensive assessment of the security situation and coordination with relevant national and international authorities.”

Similarly, Qatar lifted the shutdown of its airspace after Iran fired a series of missiles at the Gulf state targeting the US’s Al Udeid base hosted there.

“The General Civil Aviation Authority announces the resumption of air traffic in the airspace of the State of Qatar and the return of the atmosphere to normal,” it said in a statement on X.

With inputs from agencies