Algeria will close its airspace to all UAE-registered civilian and military aircraft starting at midnight on September 11, following its decision to sever diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates, the Algerian Ministry of National Defence said Thursday.
The measure will apply to UAE-registered aircraft flying to and from Algeria, effectively barring both civilian and military flights from using Algerian airspace. However, the decision includes an exception for commercial UAE civilian flights operating to and from Houari Boumediene International Airport in Algiers.
Those commercial flights will be allowed to continue until the end of 2026, when the existing contract expires, according to the Algerian defence ministry. The exemption means commercial air links between the two countries will remain operational for the remainder of the year despite the diplomatic rupture.
The airspace decision comes only hours after Algiers announced that it was severing diplomatic relations with Abu Dhabi, saying it had exhausted all avenues to preserve bilateral ties. Algeria accused the UAE of increasingly “provocative or hostile actions” but did not specify a particular incident that prompted the final decision.
Algeria also summoned the UAE ambassador in Algiers and formally notified him of the decision, giving him 48 hours to leave the country. The move marks a major escalation in relations between the two countries after years of growing tensions.
The UAE had not issued a formal response to Algeria’s decision at the time of the airspace announcement. However, UAE presidential adviser Anwar Gargash posted on X, without explicitly mentioning Algeria, that diplomacy should be based on “rationality, communication and clarity of interests,” rather than what he described as “riddles and signals that require decoding.”
The latest measures add another layer to a relationship that has deteriorated over the past several years, with the two countries increasingly divided over regional issues, including the Western Sahara dispute, Israel and developments in the Sahel. Algeria had already begun cancelling its air services agreement with the UAE earlier this year.
