Aden Airport Goes Dark: Saudi-UAE Split Paralyzes Yemen's Last Air Link

The runway that never sleeps fell silent at dawn.

ADEN—On any ordinary morning, the first rays of sun would glint off the fuselages of aging Boeing 737s as ground crews barked orders above the roar of reversing engines. Today, only the wind moves across the tarmac. Aden International—Yemen’s last functioning civilian gateway—closed its gates before the call to prayer, caught in a power struggle that stretches far beyond its cracked asphalt.

A rift written in jet fuel and politics

The closure order arrived on a folded sheet of official letterhead, delivered by a junior officer who refused to meet the airport director’s eye. Within hours, the control tower frequency went quiet; the fire trucks rolled back to their hangars. Behind the sudden standstill lies a feud between two Gulf allies—Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates—once united under the coalition banner against Houthi rebels, now wrestling for influence over Yemen’s fragile south.

‘We are not collateral damage; we are the prize,’ a senior Yemeni transport official told me, voice cracking after a sleepless night spent fielding calls from panicked carriers.

Passengers stranded, hopes grounded

Inside the dim terminal, plastic chairs sit askew, abandoned cups of cardamom coffee growing cold. More than 2,000 travelers—medical evacuees, students bound for Cairo, diaspora families clutching Canadian visas—have been told to leave without assurance of return flights. Among them, 12-year-old Amal Saleh clutches an X-ray of her fractured spine, desperate to reach a hospital in Jordan. ‘My daughter’s appointment is Monday,’ her father says, tapping the date on the film. ‘Appointments don’t wait for princes to agree.’

What the shutdown disrupts

• Critical humanitarian airbridge: 70% of medical supplies normally transit via Aden before road transport to northern provinces.
• Commercial lifeline: Airlines such as Yemenia and Royal Jordanian stand to lose an estimated $1.2 million weekly in revenue, aviation sources say.
• Diplomatic shuttle: UN envoys, Gulf mediators, and EU observers rely on Aden as a secure entry point for cease-fire talks.

From coalition partners to rival kingmakers

The Saudi-Emirati fracture first cracked open in 2019 when Abu Dhabi withdrew most troops but kept training and funding southern secessionist militias. Riyadh, backing the internationally recognized government, now accuses the UAE of fueling a ‘coup within a coup.’ Each side controls different wings of Yemen’s bureaucracy—and, crucially, rival security units guarding Aden’s airport perimeter. Aviation authorities say they received contradictory directives: one faction ordering normal operations, the other demanding a security lockdown until ‘command and control’ is clarified.

Regional ripple effects

Energy markets barely flinched—oil routes skirt Yemeni airspace—but insurance underwriters promptly raised war-risk premiums for Red Sea ports by 18%. Analysts warn that if the closure drags on, food prices could spike ahead of Ramadan, when Yemen imports half its monthly wheat supply. Meanwhile, the Houthis watch from Sanaa, reportedly repositioning drones toward southern airbases no longer shielded by coalition radar loops.

Voices from the tarmac

Cargo supervisor Murad Abdulhamid, 48, sweeps dust off conveyor belts that haven’t moved in days. ‘We survived airstrikes, we survived Covid,’ he says, ‘but politics might finish us.’ His colleague, Muna al-Aidarous, one of the few female ground electricians in Yemen, keeps testing runway lights that no controller will switch on. ‘I maintain them like they’re going to live again tomorrow,’ she shrugs. Hope, like aviation fuel, has a shelf life.

What happens next

Diplomats shuttle between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi proposing a joint security committee to manage the airport. Yet in Aden’s cafés, skepticism brews stronger than the local coffee. ‘They will sign something in a palace, then we will still be stuck here,’ says taxi driver Khaled al-Shaibi, gesturing toward the empty drop-off lane. Until a deal sticks, Yemen’s skyline will remain minus one flickering constellation of navigation lights—a country cut off from the skies, held hostage by friends who once vowed to save it.