Travelers across the Gulf and wider region are facing fresh disruption as a cluster of flight cancellations and delays hits key hubs in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey.

Data compiled from regional operations on January 17 and 18, 2026, points to at least 12 flight cancellations and 177 delays affecting services operated by Saudia, Akasa Air, Qatar Airways and several other carriers, with knock-on effects rippling through Dubai, Jeddah, Doha, and Istanbul.

The latest disruption adds to a season of volatile operations at Middle Eastern airports, where dense fog, regional congestion, and airline scheduling pressures have repeatedly combined to unsettle travel plans.

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Fresh Wave of Disruptions Hits Gulf and Turkish Hubs

The current round of disruption is centered on four major international gateways that serve as vital connectors between Europe, Asia, and Africa: Dubai International Airport, King Abdulaziz International Airport in Jeddah, Hamad International Airport in Doha, and Istanbul Airport. Across these hubs, operational data indicates a combined total of 12 cancellations and 177 delays, impacting both regional and long haul traffic on some of the busiest trunk routes in the world.

Airlines affected include Saudi Arabia’s flag carrier Saudia, India’s Akasa Air, and Qatar Airways, as well as Pakistan International Airlines and Iran National Airlines Corp on selected routes. While the absolute number of cancellations is relatively limited compared with overall daily movements at these hubs, the high volume of delays has introduced significant uncertainty for connecting passengers, especially those traveling on multi leg itineraries between Europe and South or Southeast Asia.

Airport authorities and airline representatives have urged passengers to monitor flight status notifications closely and arrive early for departures, citing a combination of adverse conditions and network knock ons. They caution that even when individual flights are only modestly delayed, aircraft and crews can quickly fall out of position, creating rolling disruptions throughout the day and across multiple airports.

How the Numbers Break Down Airport by Airport

Operational snapshots from Dubai, Jeddah, Doha, and Istanbul highlight how concentrated the latest disruption has been. At Dubai International Airport, Pakistan International Airlines has reported two cancellations and one delay on its services, affecting primarily South Asian routes and onward connections through the emirate. Given Dubai’s status as a major transfer point, the impact extends beyond point to point passengers to those relying on smooth connections to Africa, Europe, and East Asia.

In Jeddah, King Abdulaziz International Airport has borne the brunt of the current wave. Saudia has logged five cancellations and seventy two delays on its flights, while Akasa Air has recorded one cancellation and four delays on routes linking the Red Sea gateway with the Indian subcontinent. The figures underscore the strain on Saudi Arabia’s primary western hub, which handles significant religious traffic alongside rising leisure and business demand.

Doha’s Hamad International Airport has seen three cancellations and one hundred delays attributed to Qatar Airways, indicating a substantial level of operational pressure on one of the region’s most tightly timed hub banks. Istanbul Airport, meanwhile, has reported two cancellations for Iran National Airlines Corp, affecting links into the Turkish metropolis at a time when Istanbul continues to grow as a transfer point between Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East.

Underlying Causes: Weather, Congestion, and Network Strain

Airline and airport officials have not singled out a single root cause for the 12 cancellations and 177 delays, instead pointing to a familiar cocktail of operational challenges. Seasonal weather has been a recurring theme across the Gulf in recent weeks. On January 16, dense fog led to more than 1,500 delays and several cancellations across Dubai and Abu Dhabi, as early morning runway visibility dropped below operational minima and forced diversions and extended holding patterns.

Those weather related interruptions continue to reverberate through airline schedules, particularly for carriers that operate tightly choreographed bank structures built around morning and late night peaks. When flights are delayed or diverted, aircraft often arrive late into the next hub, crews can hit their regulated duty limits, and subsequent departures must be rescheduled or consolidated. This dynamic is particularly acute for long haul operations, where recovery windows are limited and spare aircraft are scarce.

Network congestion is another complicating factor. As Middle Eastern carriers expand capacity on Europe to Asia corridors and add new destinations in Africa and Central Asia, the skies above the Gulf, Levant, and eastern Mediterranean are becoming increasingly busy. Temporary airspace constraints, holding requirements, and traffic flow management measures can all add minutes to individual flights which, when multiplied across a bank of arrivals, quickly translate into packed stands, delayed turnarounds, and clogged departure queues.

Impact on Passengers in Dubai, Jeddah, Doha, and Istanbul

For travelers passing through the affected hubs, the disruption has translated into a familiar mix of last minute notifications, boarding gate changes, and extended waits. At Dubai International Airport, early morning passengers have reported longer queues at check in and security as carriers attempt to rebook those whose flights have been canceled or who have missed onward connections due to inbound delays. Airport staff have been deployed to manage crowd flows at busy transfer points.

In Jeddah, where Saudia manages a large share of domestic and regional services alongside international flights, the skew toward delays rather than outright cancellations has meant many departures are still operating but often off schedule. For religious travelers and workers on fixed itineraries, even modest delays can disrupt ground arrangements and onward ground transport, particularly for those traveling in groups or under tight visa conditions.

Doha’s Hamad International Airport has faced particular pressure at its central transfer zones, where Qatar Airways banks dozens of flights together across narrow connection windows. A single delay can trigger a cascading effect as connecting passengers and their baggage must be rerouted and reprotected on later services. Those with longer layovers have fared better, but same day connections onto Europe, North America, and Oceania have been more vulnerable to missed minimum connection times.

In Istanbul, the disruption has been more contained in raw numbers but still significant for affected passengers, particularly those using the city as a gateway to Iran, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. With two cancellations logged for Iran National Airlines Corp, some travelers have been forced to overnight in Istanbul or seek alternative routings via the Gulf or European hubs.

Saudia, Akasa Air, Qatar Airways and Others Under Pressure

The latest operational data underscores how exposed regional carriers are to even modest shocks in an interconnected network. Saudia, already managing heavy domestic and pilgrimage traffic, has had to absorb not only cancellations but also dozens of delays in Jeddah, which serves as a key anchor of its growing international strategy. While the airline has worked to offer rebooking and accommodation where required, capacity constraints and high load factors in the peak season limit flexibility.

Akasa Air, a newer entrant on India to Gulf routes, finds itself navigating disruption at a highly competitive moment in its international rollout. Delays and one cancellation at Jeddah follow earlier interruptions on some of its Gulf services when volcanic ash impacted airspace over Ethiopia in late 2025, illustrating how smaller fleets can be disproportionately affected when a few aircraft are knocked off schedule.

Qatar Airways, which has built its brand around smooth, tightly coordinated transfers through Doha, is contending with the operational challenge of maintaining reliability amid regional weather volatility and dense traffic. Having already faced significant network shocks in recent years due to geopolitical and airspace disruptions, the carrier is once again leaning on contingency planning and customer care measures to protect its hub model and reassure passengers.

For other carriers such as Pakistan International Airlines and Iran National Airlines Corp, the cancellations and delays come on top of ongoing structural and financial challenges. Irregular operations place extra strain on already stretched resources, from aircraft maintenance to crew scheduling and customer service staffing.

What Travelers Are Experiencing on the Ground

Scenes reported from terminals across the four key airports paint a picture of controlled but visible disruption rather than outright chaos. Departure boards in Dubai and Doha have been heavy with yellow delayed markers, though outright cancellations have remained comparatively few. In many cases, passengers have been informed of rolling departure time changes in increments of 30 to 60 minutes as airlines wait on updated slot information and aircraft arrival times.

For those already in transit, the most acute frustration has centered on missed connections and rebooking uncertainty. Passengers connecting through Doha and Dubai onto long haul flights to Europe, North America, or Australasia have had to queue at transfer desks to secure new itineraries, with priority often given to those with imminent departures or limited visa rights to enter the country for overnight stays. Some airlines have distributed meal vouchers and, where required, hotel accommodation, though availability has varied by carrier and ticket class.

In Jeddah and Istanbul, where more of the traffic is point to point or regional, the disruptions have taken the form of later than scheduled arrivals and departures, affecting ground transport connections and hotel check ins. Travelers on short visits have seen their usable time in destination cities compressed, while business travelers have had to reschedule meetings or events at short notice.

Operational Response and Steps for Affected Passengers

Airports and airlines across the region have been working to restore punctuality and limit further knock on disruption. In Dubai and Doha, ground operations teams have focused on speeding up aircraft turns, reallocating stands, and optimizing gate usage to reduce bottlenecks at peak times. Air traffic controllers are coordinating with carriers to sequence arrivals and departures in a way that balances safety with the need to clear backlogs.

For airlines, immediate responses include activating flexible rebooking policies, waiving certain change fees, and adding extra capacity where possible by upgauging aircraft or operating supplemental services. Carriers with larger fleets, such as Saudia and Qatar Airways, have more scope to shuffle equipment, although tight global aircraft availability and high demand constraints mean capacity cannot always be added quickly.

Travel experts recommend that passengers due to fly through Dubai, Jeddah, Doha, or Istanbul in the coming days take proactive steps to minimize disruption. These include checking their flight status repeatedly in the 24 hours before departure, using airline mobile apps or direct communications rather than relying solely on third party booking platforms, and allowing extra buffer time for connections, especially when traveling on separate tickets or across different airline alliances.

Those already affected are encouraged to document all expenses incurred as a result of delays or cancellations, such as hotel stays and meals, and to retain boarding passes and receipts in case they are eligible for reimbursement under airline policies or local consumer protection regulations. While rules vary by jurisdiction and cause of disruption, many carriers offer goodwill gestures or vouchers even when delays are categorized as outside their direct control.

Persistent Volatility Raises Questions About Resilience

The latest tally of 12 cancellations and 177 delays may seem modest in isolation, but it fits into a broader pattern of operational volatility across Middle Eastern airspace over the past year. Episodes of dense fog, airspace closures, geopolitical tensions, and infrastructure upgrades have all tested the resilience of hub and spoke models that rely on tight timing and complex cross regional connectivity.

As Gulf and Turkish airports continue to pursue ambitious expansion plans, aviation analysts note that investments in air traffic management, runway capacity, and terminal processing will need to keep pace with airline growth if similar disruptions are to be minimized. The region’s leading carriers have positioned themselves as global connectors, but that promise is only as strong as the reliability of the underlying operations and the systems that support rapid recovery when things go wrong.

For now, passengers traversing Dubai, Jeddah, Doha, and Istanbul are once again being reminded of how quickly a handful of cancellations and a few hundred delays can ripple through interconnected schedules. As airlines and airports work to steady their operations in the days ahead, travelers are likely to remain cautious, build extra time into their itineraries, and keep a close eye on departure boards across some of the world’s most important transit hubs.