The airline group is deploying ten ad-hoc flights to the UAE and offering full refunds to stranded passengers as the Middle East conflict intensifies.

Raipur, April 6 — The airspace over the Middle East is fracturing, and Air India is actively navigating the cracks.

With the Iran war rapidly escalating, the Air India Group has committed to operating 30 scheduled and non-scheduled flights across West Asia today. The operation is a logistical tightrope. It involves routing commercial aircraft into a region where infrastructure is under active fire, securing last-minute regulatory clearance, and pulling stranded passengers out of an expanding conflict zone.

The stakes are entirely physical. Iran has already targeted a petrochemical plant in Bahrain. Power plants in Kuwait have taken direct hits. The theater of war is widening daily, and commercial aviation is taking the brunt of the disruption.

But people still need to move.

Air India and its low-cost subsidiary, Air India Express, are pushing planes into the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Saudi Arabia. Ten of today’s flights are non-scheduled, ad-hoc operations specifically targeting the UAE.

They aren’t flying blind. The airline group confirmed it has secured the requisite permissions from both Indian regulators and local authorities in the UAE.

“Air India group is exploring every opportunity to operate other additional ad-hoc flights to and from destinations in West Asia,” the airline said in a statement.

It isn’t a blanket guarantee. The UAE flights remain contingent on slot availability and the ground reality at departure stations. Conditions change by the hour. A runway open at dawn might be closed by dusk.

Here is exactly where the planes are going.

In the UAE, Air India is flying an ad-hoc route from Delhi to Dubai. Air India Express is linking Dubai with Mangalore. Abu Dhabi gets an ad-hoc Express flight from Delhi. Sharjah will see Express flights from Amritsar and Kannur. Ras Al Khaimah is also cleared for ad-hoc operations.

Oman and Saudi Arabia are seeing their scheduled operations hold steady.

Air India Express is flying into Muscat from Delhi, Kannur, Mumbai, and Thiruvananthapuram.

In Saudi Arabia, Air India is maintaining its Delhi and Mumbai routes to Jeddah, alongside a Delhi-Riyadh service. Air India Express is connecting Jeddah with Bengaluru, Kozhikode, and Mangalore.

Services to Al Ain, Salalah, Dammam, Bahrain, Doha, Kuwait, and Tel Aviv remain completely off the board. No scheduled operations. No ad-hoc flights. The airspace is shut to them.

So what happens to the thousands holding tickets for flights that won’t take off? Air India is moving to clear the backlog.

Passengers booked on suspended routes have two options. They can rebook for a later date at no additional cost. Or they can walk away with a full refund.

The airline is directing passengers to its website to process the cancellations. They’ve also stood up a 24-hour hotline at +911169329333 and +911169329999.

For Air India Express passengers stuck in the UAE, the airline is offering a specific lifeline. They can rebook their tickets onto any of the airline’s additional commercial flights operating out of any UAE station to any destination in India. They won’t face extra charges.

They just need to secure a seat.

Can the corridor stay open? The conflict isn’t pausing. The region’s infrastructure is taking direct damage. Air India is finding the gaps in the airspace to keep the route between India and West Asia operational for as long as the ground conditions allow. Today, that means 30 flights. Tomorrow is another question entirely.