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Middle East airspace empties, FlightRadar24 down amid US-Iran conflict
Flight tracking website Flightradar24 was down as travellers flocked to the website amid changing itineraries and flight routes.
The US-Israel joint operations against Iran has sent the Middle East into tizzy, with explosions in key cities, countries shuttering their airspaces and flights announcing cancellations.
While the leading international flight carriers have shut their flight operations to the Middle East, the airspace over the region was shut after explosions in US bases in Doha, Manama and Riyadh.
The EU aviation safety agency EASA advised air operators to avoid operating in the Middle East at all flight levels and altitudes. Even as the airlines avoided the region, flight tracking website Flightradar24 was temporarily down as travellers flocked to the website amid changing itineraries and flight routes.
In an advisory note, EASA said there was a high risk to civil aviation in the region and that the entire affected airspace was vulnerable to spillover risks, misidentification, miscalculation and failure of interception procedures, according to Reuters.
Earlier in the day, the United States and Israel launched a joint strike against on Iran, targetting several key facilities, including near the offices of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The strike prompted retaliatory strikes from Iran, which launched missiles and drones at Israel, and US bases in the Middle East.
Flightradar24 temporarily down
The flight tracking website was temporarily down, with the website displaying an error message “500 Internal Server Error” at around 4:30 pm (IST) on Saturday.
Flightradar24 later issued a separate statement stating the visitors on the website had skyrocketed leading to error messages.
“Visitor numbers have skyrocketed over the past few hours, leading some users to see error messages on Flightradar24. Our servers are up, and we’re adding even more capacity as quickly as possible. If you receive an error message, please try again in one minute,” the website posted on X.
When HT tried accessing the Flightradar24 website, the message read “We'll be back shortly. Our engineers are working hard to make the service available as soon as possible.”
