Thousands of air travelers across Asia woke up on February 16, 2026 to find their journeys upended as a fresh wave of delays and cancellations rippled through major hubs from Tokyo and Bangkok to Shanghai, Dubai and Singapore. Data compiled from regional aviation sources showed 2,894 delays and 52 cancellations across Japan, Thailand, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, India, China and Hong Kong, snarling operations for marquee carriers including Emirates, Japan Airlines, Singapore Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Lion Air and a host of regional operators. The disruption left terminals crowded with stranded passengers, overwhelmed airline staff and mounting knock on effects for long haul connections to Europe, North America and the Middle East.
New Numbers Underscore Another Day of Turbulence
The latest disruption comes on top of a series of difficult operational days for Asian aviation in February, with today’s tally of 2,894 delayed flights and 52 cancellations adding another layer of strain to already stretched schedules. While the figures fluctuate by hour as airlines adjust rotations and recover aircraft, the broad pattern is clear: delays vastly outnumber outright cancellations, but even moderate schedule slippage at dense hubs quickly cascades into missed connections and missed workdays for travelers.
In Japan, which has been at the epicenter of multiple recent disruption waves, a combination of tight aircraft utilization and adverse weather patterns has pushed airports close to their operating limits. Recent data from Tokyo’s Haneda and Narita airports showed several hundred delays and dozens of cancellations on peak days, and Japan again featured prominently on today’s disruption boards. Similar scenes played out in Thailand and China, where Bangkok Suvarnabhumi, Shanghai Pudong and Beijing Capital all reported clusters of late running departures.
Further west, Dubai International Airport in the United Arab Emirates, home to Emirates, recorded a heavy load of delayed services but relatively few cancellations. This pattern has become familiar in the Gulf: carriers prioritize keeping long haul flights operating, but often at the expense of on time performance as ground operations and air traffic control juggle crowded arrival and departure banks. The result for passengers connecting between Europe and Asia via Dubai, Bangkok or Singapore was a day of tight transfers, rebooked itineraries and extended gate holds.
Key Hubs From Tokyo to Dubai Feel the Strain
Tokyo’s dual airport system at Haneda and Narita once again emerged as a focal point for disruption. In recent days Haneda has repeatedly ranked among the world’s most delayed and cancellation prone hubs, reflecting its intense mix of domestic shuttles and high value international routes. Even modest weather or spacing restrictions can quickly reverberate across Haneda’s dense wave structure, leading to late arriving aircraft that then propagate delays through the rest of the day’s schedule.
Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport, a primary gateway for Thailand and an important Southeast Asian transfer node, reported several hundred delays, affecting Thai Airways, regional low cost carriers and foreign airlines transiting the Thai capital. While cancellation numbers remained relatively low, the buildup of delayed departures strained gate capacity and immigration queues, with some inbound passengers forced into long lines as multiple late running flights converged at once. Choking points also appeared at Jakarta Soekarno Hatta and Kuala Lumpur International, which have featured prominently in recent disruption tallies and today again reported dense clusters of off schedule movements.
In China, Shanghai Pudong, Shanghai Hongqiao and Beijing Capital saw a familiar pattern of rolling delays tied to airspace congestion and weather management constraints. Chinese carriers, already juggling high demand in the run up to and aftermath of Lunar New Year peak travel, worked to protect trunk routes between major cities while trimming or retiming some secondary services. Hong Kong, which has also seen bouts of congestion in recent months, added to the regional picture as Cathay Pacific and partner airlines navigated tight turnarounds and crowded departure banks.
Dubai International rounded out the list of heavily impacted hubs, with Emirates and partner carriers managing significant delay volumes. Long haul flights to Europe, North America and Africa were in many cases held to accommodate late arriving feed from Asia, resulting in passengers facing extended time on board or at the gate. While outright cancellations remained limited, the knock on impact for travelers with tightly timed connections at their final destinations was pronounced.
Emirates, Japan Airlines, Singapore Airlines and Cathay Among Hardest Hit
Major full service carriers bore much of the public fallout as today’s delays and cancellations played out across screens and social media feeds. Emirates, with its hub and spoke model centered on Dubai, saw disruptions ripple through its Asian banks, affecting services to Tokyo, Bangkok, Shanghai and other key gateways. With many passengers relying on coordinated onward connections to Europe and North America, even a one or two hour delay from Asia could translate into missed links and unexpected overnight stays.
Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways, already under pressure from earlier waves of domestic and regional disruption this month, again reported high volumes of delayed services. Tight aircraft utilization and lingering fleet constraints have left Japanese carriers with limited slack to absorb irregular operations. Industry analysts note that when a single aircraft falls out of rotation for unscheduled maintenance or weather related diversions, the resulting schedule gap can quickly propagate through a day’s worth of flights.
Singapore Airlines and its low cost sibling Scoot also featured among the most affected operators, given their heavy reliance on hub connectivity at Singapore Changi. Today’s data pointed to nearly one hundred delays tied to Singapore Airlines alone, with short haul routes into Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and China particularly exposed. Each late departure or arrival carries a risk of misaligned bank connections, prompting aircraft swaps and tight turnaround efforts on the ground.
Cathay Pacific grappled with similar challenges in Hong Kong, where its extensive regional network into mainland China and Southeast Asia feeds long haul flights to Europe, North America and Australia. Even when cancellations are minimized, the cumulative effect of delays can erode schedule reliability in ways that are intensely felt by frequent business travelers who rely on Hong Kong and Singapore for same day connections.
Low Cost Giants and Regional Carriers Add to the Congestion Picture
While brand name full service airlines drew much of the attention, low cost carriers and secondary operators played a major role in the breadth of today’s disruption. Indonesia’s Lion Air, which operates large domestic and regional networks out of Jakarta and secondary Indonesian cities, logged more than one hundred delayed flights and a handful of cancellations, according to data compiled across the region. Batik Air and AirAsia also reported high delay volumes, particularly on dense shuttle routes connecting Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok and Singapore.
In India, IndiGo and Air India faced another difficult operational day following months of elevated strain across the country’s aviation system. Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International and Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International both recorded substantial clusters of late departures, reflecting the pressure on aircraft and crew scheduling as airlines rebuild capacity and navigate regulatory changes. Though India’s disruption numbers were below the peaks seen during last year’s scheduling crisis at some carriers, today’s figures underlined how little margin remains for error at packed hubs.
Regional Chinese operators, including China Eastern and China Southern affiliates as well as smaller carriers serving inland hubs, contributed to the overall disruption picture with sizable delay columns in cities such as Chongqing, Zhengzhou and Changsha. These flights often act as feeders into coastal megahubs like Shanghai and Beijing, meaning delays inland can have outsized impact on long haul departures to destinations in Europe, North America and Australia.
Across Northeast Asia, secondary Japanese and Korean carriers added to the tally of late running services. With airports such as Osaka, Sapporo and Fukuoka already emerging as pressure points in recent weeks, another day of staggered departures further compressed turnaround times and gate availability, complicating recovery efforts once weather or air traffic constraints eased.
Weather, Airspace Constraints and Operational Limits Converge
The drivers behind today’s widespread disruption are varied and often interlocking. Weather has been a significant factor throughout February, with low cloud ceilings, crosswinds and localized storms slowing operations at busy hubs from Tokyo and Sapporo to Bangkok and Shanghai. Even when conditions do not force runway closures, reduced visibility and safety spacing requirements can cut the number of aircraft movements per hour, backing up departure queues and forcing arrivals into holding patterns.
Airspace management has also played a role, particularly in and around China, where military activity and restricted corridors regularly constrain civil routes. When large swathes of airspace are temporarily unavailable, air traffic controllers must reroute or sequence flights over narrower corridors, leading to stacking and metering programs that ripple back to departure gates hundreds or thousands of kilometers away.
Operational limitations within airlines themselves add another layer of complexity. Fleet availability remains constrained at many carriers as they await delayed aircraft deliveries or manage maintenance backlogs tied to global supply chain issues. Ground handling and technical staffing levels, while improved from pandemic lows, are still under pressure at several major hubs. The result is a system that lacks resilience: a single thunderstorm cell, runway inspection or aircraft mechanical issue can quickly snowball into dozens of delayed flights across a network.
Industry observers also point to the lingering impact of tighter crew duty time regulations and more cautious scheduling practices adopted after high profile operational meltdowns in 2025. While these measures are designed to enhance safety and crew welfare, they leave airlines with less flexibility to stretch rosters when irregular operations hit, leading more quickly to rotation changes, cancellations or aircraft left out of position.
Passenger Experience: Overflowing Terminals and Frayed Tempers
For passengers caught in today’s disruption, the statistics translated into very real and often stressful experiences. At Tokyo, Bangkok and Singapore, social media posts described departure lounges filled to capacity, with long lines forming at airline service desks as travelers sought rebooking options or accommodation vouchers. In some cases, information lags compounded the frustration, with boarding times repeatedly adjusted in small increments rather than replaced with realistic estimates once the full extent of air traffic constraints became clear.
Families traveling with small children or elderly relatives reported difficulties finding seating and quiet spaces in crowded terminals, particularly during peak evening departure waves. Travelers with tight onward connections to Europe or North America faced painful choices between taking delayed flights with no guarantee of making their links, or proactively rebooking onto next day departures and scrambling to secure last minute hotel rooms.
In Dubai and other Gulf hubs, long haul passengers already several hours into their journeys found their onward legs subject to rolling delays, forcing extended waits in transit zones. While many carriers made efforts to issue meal vouchers and provide updated information, the sheer volume of affected travelers stretched frontline staff and call centers alike. Travel agencies and corporate travel managers reported surging demand for assistance as clients sought alternative routings that avoided the most congested hubs.
Yet there were also signs of growing passenger sophistication in dealing with such events. Many travelers turned to airline apps, flight tracking tools and messaging channels to monitor real time gate changes and schedule shifts, sometimes securing rebooking solutions more quickly than those relying solely on airport counters. Frequent flyers, in particular, appeared increasingly willing to accept significant rerouting, even via secondary European or Middle Eastern hubs, if it meant avoiding heavily disrupted Asian gateways such as Tokyo, Bangkok or Shanghai on the worst affected days.
What Today’s Chaos Signals for the Weeks Ahead
Today’s 2,894 delays and 52 cancellations are best understood not as an isolated shock but as the latest spike in a multi week period of elevated turbulence across Asian aviation. Since the start of February, a series of disruption events has seen daily tallies reach into the thousands of delays and hundreds of cancellations at their worst, particularly around the Lunar New Year surge and subsequent recovery period. With many carriers still rebuilding capacity and juggling tight fleet and crew resources, the region’s air transport system remains vulnerable to further shocks.
Analysts expect some gradual easing as seasonal demand moderates and weather patterns stabilize, but warn that systemic issues such as airspace congestion, limited spare aircraft and ground handling bottlenecks will not be resolved quickly. For travelers, that means continued risk of disruption on routes touching major Asian hubs, particularly multi segment itineraries that rely on precise timing between regional feeders and intercontinental departures.
Airlines and airports are under pressure to demonstrate improved resilience, whether through more conservative scheduling, additional spare aircraft capacity or better real time communication with passengers when things go wrong. Some carriers have already begun tweaking their timetables, adding buffer time between rotations on vulnerable routes and adjusting connection windows to reduce the likelihood of missed links during periods of moderate disruption.
For now, though, the message from today’s events is clear: across Asia’s key aviation markets, the system remains finely balanced and prone to tipping into visible chaos when weather, airspace restrictions and operational constraints collide. Travelers planning journeys through Tokyo, Bangkok, Shanghai, Dubai, Singapore and other major hubs in the coming days would be wise to monitor their flights closely, build in extra connection time where possible and brace for the possibility that the next wave of delays and cancellations may not be far behind.