Emirates extended its suspension of services to and from Dubai until 3 p.m. CET on 5 March, obliging Italy’s busiest airport to cancel 45 departures and arrivals linked to the Gulf. Although the airline hopes to resume operations gradually after that time, the knock-on effect will disrupt connections for at least another 24 hours, airport operator Aeroporti di Roma said in a statement. Affected customers, many of them Italian business travellers heading to project sites or conferences in the UAE and Oman, are being offered re-routing via Istanbul or Doha, a full refund, or an open ticket valid for 11 months. Because the suspension covers the morning wave of long-haul departures on 5 March, travellers who must reach Dubai urgently are scrambling for scarce seats on other carriers or routing through Europe–Asia hubs with limited capacity. The Civil Aviation Authority has authorised ground handlers to extend the maximum stay for transit Schengen passengers who miss onward connections, waiving the usual 24-hour cap. However, overstays on short-stay visas remain the traveller’s responsibility, prompting immigration lawyers to advise employers to document all airline notifications to support any future leniency requests. For corporate mobility teams the episode tests recently updated crisis-routing playbooks. Many Italian multinationals now require employees to have dual bookings on different alliances for travel into volatile regions, but uptake has been uneven because of cost. Emirates says it will publish an updated waiver policy by the evening of 5 March; mobility managers should monitor whether interline agreements will allow free switches to partner carriers without triggering fare differences. Longer term, analysts expect Gulf carriers to ask European regulators for clearer protocols on short-notice airspace closures, arguing that predictable contingency corridors would minimise the cascading visa-overstay and accommodation costs now hitting passengers and employers alike.
Source: ANSA – Economia
