Air Oct 11, 2026 · 7 min read

Houthi strikes shut Riyadh airport and hit Dammam

Riyadh is shut and Dammam is hit. Saudi air cargo now has one working gateway. Riyadh’s King Khalid airport stayed closed on Sunday after its second strike in two days. Saturday’s missile killed 12 people and wounded more than 300, Fox News reported. Reuters put the toll at 13. Dammam was also targeted. Our view: for now, Saudi air freight runs through Jeddah or it waits. At Jeddah, Flightradar24 counted 156 cancellations and 374 delays on Sunday. Forwarders should rebook Riyadh and Dammam freight via Jeddah and truck it on, and warn customers about delays. We expect Riyadh to stay restricted until the FAA’s warning expires on 10 December.

Saudi Arabia’s air cargo map now runs through Jeddah
Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport was closed on Sunday 11 October, and Saudi Arabia extended the closure. A missile strike on Saturday killed 12 people and wounded more than 300, Fox News reported. Reuters, cited on the same page, put the toll at 13. Another strike on Sunday killed one person and injured 11, according to the Saudi civil aviation authority. The Saudi-led coalition said a projectile struck Terminal 4 and started a localised fire. That evening, the General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA), Saudi Arabia’s aviation regulator, said that King Fahd International Airport in Dammam had also been targeted. Reuters reported that the Houthis, the Yemeni group fighting a Saudi-led coalition, claimed responsibility.
Our view is that Saudi air freight now has a single working entry point. Riyadh serves the capital and the centre of the country. Dammam serves the Eastern Province and its oil and industrial base. With both disrupted, nearly all Saudi-bound air cargo will either go through Jeddah on the Red Sea coast or sit in a warehouse somewhere else. Forwarders who keep booking direct to Riyadh, hoping it reopens quickly, are betting against a pattern that has been building for a week.

A week of strikes, not one bad night

The weekend strikes are the latest in a run of attacks. Khaleej Times put together the timeline. Attacks on 6 and 7 October hit Riyadh and Abha airports, killing three people. On 8 October the Houthis said they fired two cruise missiles at Riyadh’s airport. They called it their third attack on that airport. One struck airport facilities and another hit a Saudia aircraft. Saudi authorities said three Saudi citizens died, including Saudia captain Hamoud Ali Alkalthami, Euronews reported.
The flight data shows how quickly capacity disappeared. On 8 October, 169 of 378 scheduled Riyadh departures (44.71%) were cancelled or not flown, according to Cirium data cited by Khaleej Times. Saudia alone lost 97 of 140 departures. The three Saudi carriers, Saudia, flynas and flyadeal, accounted for 147 of the 169 cancelled departures. Khaleej Times summed it up: “Nearly half of all flights scheduled to leave Riyadh on Thursday were cancelled or did not operate”.
Foreign airlines pulled back too. Lufthansa and Air India said they were suspending flights to Riyadh, Reuters reported. Etihad cancelled eight flights between Abu Dhabi and Riyadh on 9 and 10 October. flydubai cancelled its Riyadh rotation on 8 October. Reuters described the Houthi aim directly: the group is “trying to shut down the kingdom’s airspace and oil facilities with missile fire.”
On 8 October, Saudia said operations were back to normal by 6pm that evening. Two days later the airport was shut again. That cycle, reopening and then being hit again, is the main reason we don’t expect a quick recovery.

Why this is a cargo story

Much of the air freight into Saudi Arabia travels as belly cargo, meaning it rides in the hold of passenger aircraft. When passenger flights are cancelled, that space goes with them. The 8 October figures show that most of the lost Riyadh capacity belonged to Saudi carriers, which are also the airlines with the deepest domestic and regional networks.
Dedicated freighters do not escape the risk either. The FAA, the US aviation regulator, issued a NOTAM, a notice to air crews, telling US airlines to use “extreme caution” in or over Saudi airspace. Its wording, quoted by Fox News, is: “Threats could pose a potential risk to aircraft at all altitudes, including overflight”. The notice is “effective through Dec. 10”. When a regulator warns about all altitudes, insurers price the whole country, not just the airports that were hit.
Dammam’s role makes this worse. After the Iran conflict broke out on 28 February, Dammam became what AGBI called a “vital fallback for Gulf carriers.” Gulf Air moved services there after drone strikes on Bahrain International Airport. Kuwait Airways started flying from Dammam after more than 97% of departures from Kuwait International Airport were cancelled, according to Cirium data cited by AGBI. Jazeera Airways moved part of its operation into Saudi Arabia. The airport the region relied on as a backup in the spring is now a target itself. On Sunday, Flightradar24 data cited by Fox News showed no departures from Dammam over a two-hour period and only three arrivals in four hours.

Jeddah takes the strain

Jeddah’s King Abdulaziz International Airport has not been reported as attacked. It is still under heavy pressure. On Sunday, Flightradar24 data showed 156 flights cancelled, 20% of the schedule, and 374 delayed, 49%, according to Fox News. Half the schedule running late on a day when the airport is expected to absorb diverted traffic points to congestion on the ground. That means ramp space, handling crews and customs inspection capacity, not just runway slots.
This has happened before on a smaller scale. In July, Saudi authorities closed Abha airport near the Yemen border on 13 July after Houthi missiles and drones targeted it, ch-aviation reported. The closure was extended to 16 July, and at least eight airlines cancelled flights. Abha is a regional airport, so freight could easily go around it. Riyadh and Dammam are a different matter, because there is no equivalent second airport to absorb their traffic.

What it means for forwarders

Our reading of the next few weeks for anyone moving freight into Saudi Arabia:

Reroute now. Book Saudi-bound air freight into Jeddah and add a road leg to Riyadh or the Eastern Province. Tell customers the truck leg adds at least a day. Where carriers still operate nearby Gulf hubs, a flight to a neighbouring hub followed by a cross-border truck is a second option. Check the border and customs arrangements before promising a date.

Expect space to tighten at Jeddah. If half of Jeddah’s flights are delayed while the airport is absorbing extra traffic, cargo warehouses there will fill up. Book early and confirm handling slots.

Watch the surcharges. A war-risk surcharge is an extra fee carriers charge to cover higher insurance costs in a conflict zone. We think carriers will start adding Saudi-specific fees. Make sure contracts and quotes say who pays them.

Check your contracts. Tenders that specify Riyadh or Dammam as the delivery airport may need amending. Customers on DAP terms (delivered at place, where the seller pays to get goods to the named place) will want to know who covers the extra truck leg.

Keep the ocean option in view. Shippers with less urgent freight may switch back to sea. This is especially true for Eastern Province cargo, where the airport is now under threat.

Rates were already rising

This disruption comes as costs are already climbing. TAC Index data reported by Air Cargo News on 6 October showed the Baltic Air Freight Index, a global benchmark for air cargo rates, up 5% in the week to 5 October and 25.5% year on year. Jet fuel prices were up more than 100% year on year, according to TAC. TAC said rates were “far from keeping pace yet with surging jet fuel prices”. TAC publishes no Gulf lane figure, so the Saudi impact won’t show up in the headline index. It will appear in individual quotes and in fuel and security surcharges first.

Our call

We expect King Khalid International to stay closed or run a reduced schedule until at least 10 December, when the FAA warning is due to expire. We do not expect foreign passenger airlines, and the belly cargo they carry, to return to a full Riyadh schedule before then. We also expect at least one major carrier serving the kingdom to add a Saudi-specific war-risk or security surcharge within four weeks. Forwarders should price the Jeddah routing and the road leg into every Saudi quote through the end of the year.

Sources