- Dubai Airports is scaling up flight movements following the full restoration of UAE airspace on May 2, 2026.
- Operations were restricted since February 2026 due to regional airspace closures amid geopolitical tensions.
- Despite disruptions, Dubai’s airports handled 6 million passengers and 213,000 metric tons of cargo.
(DUBAI, UAE) – Dubai Airports is scaling up operations and increasing flight movements after UAE airspace returned to normal, Chief Executive Officer Paul Griffiths said on May 4, 2026, marking the clearest sign yet that the country’s aviation system has moved out of the disruption that followed precautionary closures earlier this year.
Griffiths said in a LinkedIn post: “Now that UAE airspace is fully restored, we are scaling up operations and increasing flight movements in line with available regional routing capacity.” The statement tied the pace of recovery not only to local readiness at Dubai’s airports, but also to the broader capacity of flight paths across the region.
Dubai Airports, which operates Dubai International Airport, or DXB, and Al Maktoum International, or DWC, said it is working with airlines to restore schedules after the UAE General Civil Aviation Authority announced on May 2, 2026 that air traffic had returned to normal. The lifting of all restrictions closed a chapter that began on February 28, 2026, when the UAE partially closed airspace as a precaution amid the US-Israel-Iran war.
That disruption forced Dubai’s airport system to keep moving under tight constraints. Since late February 2026, DXB and DWC handled over 6 million passengers, 32,000 aircraft movements, and 213,000 metric tons of cargo, figures that show how much traffic continued to flow even while regional routing options narrowed.
Travel demand did not collapse during that period. Griffiths said maintaining stability required “constant adaptation” during this “unprecedented” stretch, language that reflected the operational adjustments needed to keep passengers, aircraft and cargo moving through one of the world’s busiest international hubs.
The timeline of the disruption shows both the depth of the interruption and the speed of the recovery. Between March 1-12, 2026, Dubai airports handled 1.4 million passengers, even as services were still dealing with the aftereffects of the airspace measures introduced at the end of February.
DXB then began to reopen more fully on March 7, 2026, when services partially resumed in the afternoon after a temporary suspension. Less than a week later, on March 13, 2026, UAE national carriers had reached 44.6% recovery in operating levels, showing an airline network rebuilding step by step rather than all at once.
By April 30, 2026, the cumulative figures had reached 6 million passengers, 32,000 movements, and 213,000 tons of cargo. Two days later, on May 2, 2026, all restrictions were lifted and air traffic normalized, setting up the May 4 announcement from Dubai Airports that it was increasing flight movements again.
The numbers underline how heavily the disruption weighed on the city’s flagship airport. DXB handled 18.6 million passengers in the first quarter of 2026, down 20.6% from a year earlier, a decline linked to the airspace restrictions and the operational interruptions that followed.
Even with that drop, the airport system remained active across both passenger and freight operations. Cargo volumes reached 213,000 metric tons during the disruption period, while aircraft movements climbed to 32,000, evidence that Dubai’s role as a transfer point for people and goods continued despite the reduced freedom to route flights across nearby airspace.
Airline network recovery moved ahead in parallel. Emirates Airline restored 96% of its global network and was serving 137 destinations in 72 countries with over 1,300 weekly frequencies, equal to 75% of pre-disruption capacity.
Those figures matter for Dubai Airports because the return of airport operations depends on airline schedules being rebuilt in practical terms: aircraft rotations, available routing, destination demand and slot capacity. Griffiths’ reference to alignment with available regional routing capacity pointed to that reality, with the airports able to add movements only as the broader regional system regained room to absorb them.
Dubai Airports said it is prioritizing capacity increases at DXB while also pursuing long-term expansion plans at DWC to support the recovery. The two-track approach puts immediate emphasis on restoring throughput at the current main hub while keeping an eye on larger future capacity in Dubai’s second airport system.
DXB remains the center of that effort. Any increase in flights there affects not only local departures and arrivals but also transfer traffic, which has long been central to Dubai’s position in global aviation and which was tested when regional air corridors tightened after the February precautionary measures.
DWC also played a role in absorbing and maintaining traffic through the period of instability. Together, the two airports kept handling millions of passengers and large cargo volumes while airlines adjusted schedules around changing restrictions, partial resumptions and the gradual reopening of regional routes.
Griffiths framed the recovery as an operational task rather than a symbolic milestone. His statement did not describe a full return to previous traffic patterns overnight; it described a scaling-up process, tied closely to the routing capacity now available across the region and to coordination with airlines restoring their schedules.
That cautious sequencing fits the recent record. UAE airspace was only fully restored on May 2, 2026, and the system had gone through more than two months of shifting conditions since the partial closure on February 28, 2026, including a temporary suspension of DXB services and a staged rebuilding of airline operating levels.
Strong travel demand persisted through all of it, Griffiths said, a point borne out by the volume that continued to move through Dubai even under constrained conditions. More than 6 million passengers passed through DXB and DWC from late February, a reminder that Dubai Airports remained active even when the regional airspace picture was far from stable.
The next phase now rests on execution: more flight movements, more restored schedules, and more capacity at DXB, all linked to a regional air network that has returned to normal after weeks of disruption. Griffiths summed up the shift in a single sentence: “Now that UAE airspace is fully restored, we are scaling up operations and increasing flight movements in line with available regional routing capacity.”
