Europe’s aviation regulator widens Saudi airspace warning

• EASA, the European Union's aviation safety agency, said Friday that airlines should avoid more of Saudi Arabia's airspace.
• The agency added a new area in the north-west and said recent attacks showed the Houthis can and mean to hit targets deeper inside Saudi territory, including the capital.
• Saudi aviation officials said two attacks on Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport on Thursday killed three Saudi citizens and injured several others.

Europe's top aviation safety regulator on Friday broadened its warning against flying in parts of Saudi Arabian airspace. The move came a day after Houthi forces struck Riyadh's main airport, deepening fears that the conflict spilling out of Yemen now threatens civilian air travel in the Gulf.

The agency, EASA, revised a conflict zone bulletin it first issued on Sep. 30, adding a stretch of north-western Saudi Arabia to its list of areas airlines are advised to stay out of. FlightGlobal, an aviation trade publication, reported that the new restriction took effect Friday and covers a new zone around Riyadh's international airport.

The regulator's reasoning went beyond the missiles themselves. EASA said the Houthis' recent attacks had shown both the ability and the intent to reach deep into the kingdom, and that repeated missile and drone strikes, combined with the activation of air defenses, raised the chance that civilian aircraft could be misidentified.

Deadly strikes on a major hub

The update followed what Saudi officials described as a deadly day at King Khalid International Airport. The kingdom's civil aviation authority said Friday that two attacks there on Thursday had killed three Saudis and wounded several others. The Houthis, who have repeated their threats against airlines serving Saudi Arabia, said they had hit the airport with two cruise missiles.

The airport matters to the region's air network. King Khalid is the kingdom's second-busiest, behind only Jeddah, and handled 296,800 flights in 2025, according to Saudi government statistics.

Airlines retreat

Carriers have begun to respond. Lufthansa Group and three Indian airlines announced after Thursday's attacks that they would halt flights to Riyadh. By 1305 GMT on Friday, FlightRadar24 data showed 131 flights to and from the Saudi capital had been canceled, following hundreds of cancellations a day earlier.

Governments have also raised alarms. A US embassy alert for Americans in the Middle East said the Houthis had attacked civilian airports and other critical infrastructure in Saudi Arabia, and that the situation could worsen quickly.

Read more: Houthis warn Saudi airspace dangerous for civilian flights