Iran International
Iran’s international air traffic has plunged to a fifth of pre-war levels, ten days after authorities reopened the country’s main airports following a ceasefire with Israel.
Iran officially reopened its airspace on July 3, saying all airports were fully operational.
Khomeini International Airport recorded just 25 takeoffs and landings on July 12, down from 118 on June 7, the Saturday before the June 13 Israeli strikes.
Mehrabad Airport in Tehran saw a similar drop, halving its total flights over the same period.
On June 7, Mehrabad Airport handled a total of 137 domestic flights. By July 12, nearly three weeks after the ceasefire, that number had dropped to just 70.
“A lot of domestic flights are being cancelled because the demand simply isn’t there,” a Mehrabad employee told Iran International. “People are still afraid their planes could be targeted. Everyone remembers the Ukrainian flight.”
In 2020, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards mistakenly shot down a Ukrainian passenger jet over Tehran, killing 176 people. Authorities later blamed “human error” in the air defense system.
Dramatic fall in regional and long-haul flights
International connections from Iran have collapsed since the war. Before the attack, Khomeini Airport saw routine flights to Europe and East Asia. By July 12, nearly all those routes had vanished.
What remains is a limited number of flights to regional countries, and even those have been sharply reduced.
Flights to Turkey, which had peaked at 42 on June 7, dropped to just five on July 12. Routes to Austria, Germany, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, China, Thailand and India were eliminated entirely. UAE flights also fell from 19 to four.
Only 15 percent of flights at Khomeini Airport on July 12 were operated by foreign airlines, down from 46 percent a month earlier. European carriers like Lufthansa and Austrian Airlines, as well as major Persian Gulf operators including Emirates, Qatar Airways, and Pegasus, have all halted service and they did not any flights on July 12.
The domestic sector has tried to fill the vacuum. New or expanded operations were registered by Kish Air, Varesh, while others—like Mahan Air, Iran Air, Taban, and Yazd Airways—recorded no flights at all.
At Mehrabad, flights were only operating to 11 cities. The majority of former destinations—including Ahvaz, Isfahan, Tabriz, and Bushehr—no longer appeared on the boards.
Some domestic services appear to have shifted to more operational or government-linked destinations, including frequent flights to industrial or oil-rich areas such as Asaluyeh and Siri Island.
Opaque routes and missing data
Several recent flights had no listed origin or destination, raising questions about potential information blackouts or data suppression. Sources at Mehrabad suggested this may reflect either intentional concealment or failures in data processing since the war.
In other cases, regular routes had become effectively defunct. Flights from and to airports in Rasht, Yazd, Zahedan, Qeshm, Ahvaz and many others were no longer available, despite being active before the June 13 escalation.
“Some of these suspended routes were simply under-booked,” the Mehrabad staffer added. “Tickets were sold, but not enough people were willing to fly, so the flights got cancelled.”
Iran’s aviation sector, already under strain from sanctions and underinvestment, now faces another extended period of isolation—one increasingly reflected in the empty skies above.
