Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Corder. It's Tuesday the 17th of

June and throughout today I've been looking at and talking to people about the effects of the closure of

Middle East airspace on airline schedules and routines and ultimately your holiday or business or family trip.

Of course, you go back to the early hours of Friday morning the 13th of June, and on that day,

Israel began an attack on Iran.

That meant that immediately the airspace over Iran and also Iraq, which separates them, and also Syria,

was closed to civilian air traffic. The flights that were in the air at the time had to take

evasive action, of course, and some of them were diverted across the region in order to refuel before continuing their journey. Things have now

settled down and we have a picture of what is happening in the Middle East and more widely to

affect your flight. Now the conflict between Israel and Iran shows no sign of lessening and so we have to assume that

Iran, Iraq, Syria, as well as Israel will have their airspace closed. That means that most

airlines are going to be using a southerly route that goes over Saudi Arabia and Egypt to

connect between Western Europe, including the UK,

and the Gulf, as well as South Asia. You might think, well, what's wrong with that? It's very bad

news in terms of trying to get to where you need to be economically in terms of fuel and

efficiently in terms of getting your people there on time.

For instance, if you look at the route on Emirates between Glasgow or Edinburgh and Dubai,

the most direct path would go over Ukraine as well as Iraq and Iran.

Now, Ukraine has been off limits since the Russians decided to invade their southern neighbor

and checking on the punctuality of the Emirates Super Jumbo flight each day from Glasgow to Dubai.

They are running at least an hour late every day so far this week.

That might not sound too bad.

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