From regional traffic reorganization to sector-level airspace responses: The 28 February 2026 Middle East airspace disruption

Large-scale airspace disruptions can reorganize civil aviation traffic far beyond the directly affected airspace, yet their operational consequences are difficult to characterize using traffic volume alone. This study examines the 28 February 2026 Middle East airspace disruption to understand the operational conditions within neighboring sectors by analyzing traffic observations in a period of about two weeks time around the event. It first establishes a multi-scale empirical picture of the disruption, from intercontinental route detours to corridor redistribution across the Middle East and traffic changes within the neighboring Jeddah Flight Information Region. Building on this evidence, a trajectory-computable framework is developed to identify temporal changes in regional traffic structure and characterize sector-level operational responses. The results show that the regional traffic structure departs rapidly from its baseline configuration during the initial disruption period and subsequently settles into a distinct and comparatively stable post-event regime with limited day-to-day variation. Within the Jeddah Flight Information Region, the redistribution is spatially uneven. Northeastern sectors largely lose their former transit function, while southeastern sectors increasingly absorb traffic associated with the southern alternative routing structure. Detailed analysis of a representative southeastern sector further shows that this changing role is not captured by traffic volume alone. Although instantaneous occupancy and weekly throughput remain broadly comparable with baseline levels, boundary-crossing activity becomes more spatially distributed, some crossing bands assume different downstream directional roles, trajectories become less direct and more maneuver-intensive, and locally proximate traffic interactions shift spatially. These findings show that major airspace disruptions are better understood as structural reorganizations of traffic rather than simple regional traffic losses, providing empirical insight into the operational challenges that air traffic management may face as traffic patterns reorganize after a disruption.