Dubai International Airport (DXB) was hit amid Iran’s retaliatory missile attacks on 28 February 2026, sustaining minor damage to a concourse/terminal area and injuring four workers, according to a Dubai government statement cited by FlightGlobal. The airport said the incident was quickly contained, with emergency response teams deployed and coordination underway with relevant authorities; reports indicated the damage involved Terminal 3, a core facility for Emirates’ operations.
The strike accelerated a Gulf-wide aviation shutdown: multiple states closed airspace, airlines shifted into contingency mode, grounding regional networks, canceling hundreds of flights, and rerouting long-haul services around closed flight-information regions. FlightGlobal, citing FlightAware data, said Emirates canceled 492 flights, flydubai 329, and Etihad 212 as the disruption spread across key hubs.
Reuters later reported that DXB and Abu Dhabi’s Zayed International both sustained damage, with casualties reported at both sites. At the same time, strikes also affected other Gulf infrastructure, underscoring how quickly a security event can translate into systemwide schedule collapse at the world’s most important east–west transit nodes. With aircraft and crews displaced and major hubs “shut or severely restricted,” recovery planning became as much a network-logistics problem as an airport-incident response.
Images: Scene Now, The Irish Sun