Oct 12 (Reuters) – The skies above the Saudi capital Riyadh were largely empty on Monday after deadly attacks by Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis on the city’s airport, with about 60% of scheduled flights expected to be cancelled, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium.
King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia’s second-busiest airport after Jeddah, cancelled 99.7% of all scheduled flights on Sunday, Cirium data showed. More than a third of flights scheduled across the kingdom were not expected to operate on Monday, while flight tracking website FlightRadar24 estimated cancellations at Riyadh airport of about 78%.
The Saudi capital’s airport remained closed on Sunday after an attack that killed one person and injured nearly a dozen others. The strike followed another attack claimed by the Houthis a day earlier that killed 13 people and wounded more than 300.
The attacks marked one of the most significant disruptions to Saudi civil aviation in years, forcing airlines across Europe and Asia to suspend services. The Federal Aviation Administration told US airlines on Sunday to exercise caution when flying to or over Saudi Arabia.
Lufthansa Group has cancelled all flights to Riyadh until October 16, while Air France-KLM has extended a previous suspension of services to and from the Saudi capital until the end of the month.
(Reporting by Joanna Plucinska in London and Gianluca Lo Nostro in Gdansk; Editing by Matt Scuffham)
