Houthi strikes disrupted 312 of 1,194 scheduled departures from Saudi Arabia on Thursday — more than a quarter of the kingdom's entire departure board — according to Cirium data, dealing a direct blow to the reliability claim underpinning the Gulf's hub-and-spoke aviation model.

Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport carried the heaviest losses: 188 of its 378 departures were canceled or had not operated as of 6 p.m. local time. Nearly half of the capital's outbound schedule never left the ground.

The disruption follows Houthi attacks on Abha International Airport and King Khalid on Tuesday and Wednesday that killed three people and injured 36, according to Saudi Arabia's General Authority of Civil Aviation. On Thursday, Houthi spokesperson Yahya Sareea claimed on X that a ballistic missile struck King Khalid, "causing damage and disrupting air traffic at the airport."

Which carriers absorbed the losses?

Saudia, the flag carrier, took the largest hit: 169 of its 402 departures, or 42%, were canceled or did not fly. The low-cost challengers fared only marginally better.

• Saudia: 42% of departures disrupted
• Flynas: 27% of departures disrupted
• Flyadeal: 26% of departures disrupted
• Riyadh Air: paused all Riyadh departures for the rest of Thursday

Not every operator bent. Etihad, Royal Jordanian, Air Arabia and Pegasus ran full schedules, a split that sellers of travel will read as a marker of which Gulf routings can still be sold with confidence.

What is the cost ripple beyond Saudi airspace?

The strikes compound the impact of a European regulatory warning issued well before this week's attacks. EASA advised operators on September 30 to avoid Saudi airspace, citing missile and drone risk.

That advisory is already redrawing network economics outside the kingdom. Wizz Air has pushed its Abu Dhabi and Dubai restart from October 25 to March 27, 2027, saying longer routings around Saudi airspace make A321neo and A321XLR operations commercially unviable.

The delay illustrates the core trade problem: airspace avoidance inflates flight times and fuel burn, and narrowbody economics that worked on direct Gulf routes stop working when aircraft must fly around the region rather than through it.

Why this threatens the Gulf hub model

Gulf carriers sell connectivity built on schedule certainty. With the region's main airports now missile targets, Thursday's numbers show how quickly that product degrades: a single day of attacks erased roughly a quarter of Saudi capacity and half of Riyadh's departures.

For distributors, the immediate consequences are refund exposure, reaccommodation costs and a harder sell on Gulf-connect itineraries. For carriers, the EASA advisory plus active strikes mean route planning must now price in airspace risk rather than just demand — a structural shift, not a one-week schedule adjustment.

Further attacks on Riyadh or Abha would keep the disruption skewed toward Saudia and its low-cost rivals, while the September 30 advisory continues to divert European traffic away from Saudi corridors at least through Wizz Air's revised March 2027 restart window.