Where things stand right now — as of 21 August 2026. Several Gulf routes out of the UAE have been disrupted for most of August, as regional airspace restrictions continue. Schedules have moved week to week: Etihad and Emirates have each cancelled and then partially restored Bahrain and Kuwait services, Qatar Airways resumed both in early August, and flydubai and Air Arabia have kept flying them with individual services cancelled at short notice. Because this changes daily, check your own flight in your airline’s app rather than relying on any published list — including this one — and read your government’s current travel advice for the region. The rest of this guide is not about this week. It explains the rules that apply whenever a flight out of the UAE is cancelled, and those rules do not change with the news.
A cancellation notice arrives and the first question is always the same: what is the airline actually obliged to give me, and what is it merely offering out of goodwill? Those are two different things, and in the UAE the gap between them is wider than most travellers assume.
The rulebook is the General Civil Aviation Authority’s Passenger Welfare Program (CAR-PWP), Issue 02, which was issued on 25 December 2024 and has applied since 1 January 2025. It is short, it is public, and almost nobody reads it. We did, and several things in it will surprise you.
Is the airline required to refund me?
Not by the UAE regulation, no. This is the single most misunderstood point in Gulf air travel.
Search the entire text of the Passenger Welfare Program and the word “refund” does not appear once. The single appearance of “reimbursement” is in guidance on what airport-to-airline service level agreements should cover — money moving between those two parties, not to you. What the regulation requires on cancellation is set out in clause PWP.B.006: that you are informed at the earliest time practicable, offered care, carried on another flight as soon as practicable where space is available, and offered the option of a return flight to your first point of departure or re-routing within a reasonable period, including on another airline where seats are available.
In other words, the UAE regulation guarantees you transport and care. It does not guarantee you your money back.
Your right to cash comes from somewhere else: the airline’s own conditions of carriage and the fare rules attached to your ticket. In practice the major UAE carriers do refund a ticket they cancelled themselves — but that is the airline’s policy rather than a Passenger Welfare Program requirement, and the terms differ by carrier. Other routes do exist — the Montreal Convention, which the UAE ratified in 2003, makes a carrier liable for damage caused by delay, and federal consumer protection law addresses a service not properly performed. Neither produces the fixed payout people expect. That distinction matters the moment an airline pushes back.
Refund, rebooking or credit — which one can I actually demand?
Rebooking and re-routing you can demand. PWP.B.006 puts those on the airline. Note the detail most people miss: the re-routing option explicitly includes being placed on a flight of another airline, subject to availability. If your carrier tells you the next seat it has is in four days, you are entitled to ask about being re-routed on a competitor. It is subject to availability, so it is not an absolute right — but it is a legitimate ask, and it is written into the regulation.
A cash refund you negotiate, under your fare rules. Ask for it in writing, and ask specifically for a refund to the original form of payment.
A voucher or travel credit is an offer, not an obligation — and you can decline it. Vouchers are attractive to airlines because the money stays with them, and they are often processed instantly while a card refund takes weeks. That speed is real, but so is the trade-off: a voucher usually carries an expiry date and is usually tied to the name it was issued in. Emirates states in its US customer service plan — published under American DOT rules, so read it as the standard it holds itself to rather than a worldwide promise — that where it offers alternative transportation or another form of compensation instead of a refund, it will advise you of your right to reject the alternative and receive a refund. If you want cash, say so and keep saying so.
What does “operational reasons” mean, and does it kill my claim?
“Operational reasons” is not a legal category. It is a phrase airlines use to cover everything from a crew shortage to an aircraft swap to a closed airway, without specifying which.
Here is the part that genuinely surprises people who have flown in Europe: the UAE regulation contains no “extraordinary circumstances” defence at all. The phrase does not appear in the Passenger Welfare Program. Neither does “force majeure”. The EU’s system lets an airline escape compensation by showing the cause was outside its control; the UAE’s welfare regulation does not work that way, because it is not built around compensation in the first place. (The Montreal Convention does carry an all-reasonable-measures defence, but that governs claims for damage caused by delay, not the duty of care below.)
The practical consequence is a good one for passengers. The duty to inform you, feed you, house you where appropriate and get you where you are going is not conditional on whose fault the cancellation was. An airline citing airspace restrictions still owes you care and onward carriage.
What it will not produce is a compensation cheque. Issue 02 of the regulation made that deliberate: its own change log records that the drafters removed the word “compensation” from the definition of “Cancellation”. If a claims website promises you a fixed payout for a cancelled UAE departure the way EU261 does, treat the promise with caution — there is no equivalent tariff in UAE law.
Meals, hotel and transport — when does the airline have to pay?
For a cancellation, the regulation requires “care” — refreshments, meals, hotel accommodation, transport between the airport and the hotel, and appropriate means of communication — as appropriate. That qualifier does real work: care scales to your situation, so a passenger facing an overnight wait is in a different position from one rebooked two hours later.
For delays the thresholds are precise, and they are worth memorising because they are what you quote at a service desk:
- 1 to 3 hours — up to date information on flight status.
- 3 to 8 hours — information, free meals and refreshments commensurate with the waiting time, appropriate means of communication, and hotel accommodation if you have missed a connection and the next probable connection is more than 8 hours away.
- More than 8 hours — hotel accommodation, meals and refreshments, means of communication, and transport between the airport and the hotel.
Two limits are worth knowing before you argue. First, welfare under the programme is triggered where a flight is cancelled within 48 hours of its scheduled departure time — a cancellation announced weeks ahead is a commercial matter between you and the airline. Second, and more important for anyone caught up in a regional disruption: the regulation applies to operators flying from and to airports in the UAE, and to operators diverting into the UAE. Its guidance material adds that “disruptions at airports other than the UAE will be subject to local regulations” — guidance material is explanatory rather than binding, but it tells you how the authority reads the clause.
So if you are stranded in Kuwait, Bahrain or Doha rather than in Dubai or Abu Dhabi, do not assume the UAE rules travel with you. Your practical leverage there is the airline’s own policy and the local regulator’s. Our companion playbook on what to do when a Gulf flight is cancelled covers being stranded outside the UAE.
One more exclusion, rarely mentioned and also set out in guidance material: the programme is not intended to cover passengers travelling free of charge, or on a reduced fare not available directly or indirectly to the public. Staff and other non-public-fare tickets sit outside it, though the regulation says operators should still accommodate those passengers as far as practicable.
How do I complain to the GCAA?
Complain to the airline first, in writing, and keep the reference number. The GCAA is the regulator, not a small-claims court: it oversees whether operators run their welfare programmes properly, which is exactly the kind of complaint it is useful for. Under clause PWP.A.004 the authority “shall be responsible for the continuous oversight” of airline and airport passenger welfare programmes.
The steps:
- Raise it with the airline in writing and wait for its response. Keep the booking reference, the cancellation message and any receipts.
- If you are unsatisfied, contact the GCAA by email at Customercare@gcaa.gov.ae or on its toll-free line +971 800 4466. Both are published on the authority’s own contact page.
- Set out the flight number, date, route, what the airline did and did not provide, and what you are asking for. Cite the clause — PWP.B.006 for a cancellation, PWP.B.003 for a terminal delay.
- Attach evidence. Receipts for meals and hotels you paid for yourself are what turn a complaint into a claim.
Airline by airline: where do I actually claim?
Etihad Airways. Refunds run through Manage My Trip at etihad.com/manage, where you select Cancel / Refund. Etihad accepts refund requests up to two hours before departure provided you have not checked in. Etihad states card refunds typically take 5–14 business days depending on your bank; other payment types can take up to 45 business days. You can instead take the value as an Etihad voucher, which is credited instantly. When Etihad cancels a flight it emails your options, and sends an app notification if you have the app installed with notifications on.
Emirates. Emirates runs a separate disruption refund form, distinct from its ordinary refund request — worth finding, because the general form is the one most people land on. Refunds are stated at approximately 15 business days and go back to the card used. Two traps: extras such as seat selection, extra legroom or an upgrade are not refunded automatically with the ticket and need a separate request each; and if you booked through a travel agent, Emirates will send you back to the agent.
flydubai. On a cancellation flydubai lets you rebook free of charge to a flight within 30 days either side of your original date, or to the next scheduled service, with no penalty and no fare difference. Outside that window there is still no penalty, but you pay any fare difference. Its published disruption route for value returned is a flydubai voucher, usable by the named passenger before its expiry. Its Contact Centre is +971 600 54 44 45; agent bookings go back to the agent.
Air Arabia. Claims go through Manage Booking on airarabia.com or its call centre. As a low-cost carrier its fare rules are tighter than the full-service airlines’, so read the conditions attached to your specific fare before you accept an offer.
Whichever airline you are with, one habit pays for itself: get the offer in writing. A verbal promise at a desk at 2am is not something you can attach to a complaint.
What does travel insurance usually cover — and what does it not?
Travel insurance is where passengers usually recover the costs an airline will not pay — and where claims commonly come unstuck, for the same handful of reasons.
Usually covered: reasonable extra accommodation, meals and local transport caused by a covered disruption; missed onward connections and prepaid arrangements you lose; and, on better policies, the cost of a replacement ticket. Cover generally starts after a stated delay threshold, so read that number in your own policy.
Usually not covered: anything the airline has already reimbursed — you cannot claim twice for the same meal; costs you cannot evidence; and, critically, disruption from an event that was already publicly known when you bought the policy. Insurers call this a known event, and buying cover after a disruption is in the news is a common reason a claim is refused.
Check specifically whether your policy treats airspace closures and regional disruption as covered or excluded. Many standard policies exclude them, and this is exactly the scenario where that clause decides your claim. Read your own wording — policies sold in the UAE differ substantially, and only your certificate governs your claim.
Keep every boarding pass, cancellation notice, receipt and screenshot. Insurers pay documented claims and decline recalled ones.
What is the short version?
If your flight out of the UAE is cancelled, the airline owes you information, care and a way to get where you are going — including, if seats allow, on someone else’s aircraft. It does not owe you a compensation payment, because UAE regulation does not create one. A refund is real but it comes from your fare rules, not the regulator, so ask for it explicitly and in writing. And if you are stranded outside the UAE, remember that the UAE’s rules stopped applying the moment you left.
If you are travelling around the Gulf regularly, the residency and ID rules in the neighbouring states are worth having straight before you need them: our guides to the Kuwait Civil ID, the Bahrain CPR and the Oman resident card cover what each country expects of you on arrival, and our UAE residence visa renewal guide covers the document most often out of date when a trip goes wrong.
Last updated: 21 August 2026. We update this guide rather than replace it — the rules below change rarely, the flight status above changes often.
Primary sources: the UAE General Civil Aviation Authority’s Passenger Welfare Program, CAR-PWP Issue 02 (issued 25 December 2024, applicable 1 January 2025), the GCAA contact and complaints page, Etihad’s cancellation and delays FAQ, Emirates’ disruption refund request and flydubai’s disruptions policy.
