Wedged between the Middle East’s most embattled conflict zones, Jordan has long learned to navigate military strife.

For the kingdom’s national airline, that means studying missile flight paths to redirect its aircraft, sometimes with just moments to respond. 

Such experience has allowed Royal Jordanian Airlines to keep its fleet of about two dozen aircraft operating, even as large swaths of air space in the region shut down while Israel and Iran traded missiles in the past two weeks. 

Iraq, Israel and, Syria – which all border on Jordan – and even the Gulf states closed their skies at certain points in recent days, disrupting operations for major airlines and leaving passengers and aircraft dislocated as the region’s aviation network froze.

“Those missile paths were quite well known,” chief executive officer Samer Al Majali said in an interview from Amman. “Sometimes the warning is in minutes and sometimes the warning is several hours ahead. That’s how it’s dealt with.”

While Jordan has managed to stay out of a direct confrontation, the country of about 11 million people has borne the brunt of the armed conflict raging just outside its borders, from Israel’s strikes on Hamas since late 2023 to years of civil war in Syria.

That’s forced the carrier to seek safer aircraft passages that take longer, sometimes doubling flight times and driving up operating costs, Al Majali said.

The threat of missile strikes has become a brutal reality for the aviation industry, including the downing of a Malaysia Airlines aircraft (MH17) over Ukraine in 2014 that killed almost 300 people on board.

An Azerbaijan Airlines passenger jet was hit with what was likely a Russian surface-to-air missile approaching Grozny in late 2024, killing 38 people.

Qatar closed down its air space for several hours recently after Iran fired missiles at a US base in the country. The move left tens of thousands of passengers in the region out of position, throwing operations at Qatar’s main airport into chaos. 

Royal Jordanian’s earnings took a hit after people started cancelling flights in late 2023. Leisure travel has dropped as tourists worry that they might get stuck should air space closes down, Al Majali said.

At one point in the last few weeks, Sweden’s aviation authorities denied the airline’s planes landing rights at Stockholm’s main airport because they were coming from a perceived conflict zone, the CEO said. 

Beyond the threat from missiles, Royal Jordanian has had to grapple with so-called GPS spoofing – deliberate interference where false satellite signals disrupt aircraft navigation systems. As a result, an aircraft receives unreliable information, affecting multiple on-board operations, Al Majali said.

In the past few weeks, sirens rang throughout the country when missiles from Iran passed through the skies of Jordan to reach Israel. Shrapnel and downed drones landed in the kingdom, injuring several people.

The exchange of fire between Tehran and Tel Aviv has caused widespread aviation disruption since last year. Yet the recent airspace closures were the most consequential yet for air traffic in the region, also reaching Dubai, one of the busiest hubs in the world.

Emirates and Qatar Airways handle a big portion of the traffic within the Middle East and are transfer points for long-haul travel between Asia, Europe and North America. – Bloomberg