Australia's flag carrier, Qantas, said on Friday that its flights over the Middle East will avoid the Strait of Hormuz and Gulf of Oman following the downing of a US surveillance drone in the region.
The restriction will mean a slight change to the route for flights between Australia and London, the airline said in a statement.
The news comes on the heels of an emergency order from US Federal Aviation Administration prohibiting US operators from flying in Iran-controlled airspace over the Strait of Hormuz and Gulf of Oman due to heightened tensions.
The US ban
The US flight ban was implemented over Iran's Revolutionary Guard shooting down a US military surveillance drone, affecting a region crucial to global air travel.
The Federal Aviation Administration warned of a "potential for miscalculation or misidentification" in the region after an Iranian surface-to-air missile on Thursday brought down a US Navy RQ-4A Global Hawk, an unmanned aircraft with a wingspan larger than a Boeing 737 jetliner and costing over $US100 million ($A145 million).
The US said it made plans for limited strikes on Iran in response, but then called them off.
Media reports on 20 June 2019 state that Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) claim to have shot down a US spy drone over Iranian airspace. Source: DIVIDS
The FAA previously warned of risk in the region, but Friday's warning threw into stark relief a danger both it and analysts warned was real after the shooting down of a Malaysian Airlines flight over Ukraine in 2014.
"The threat of a civil aircraft shoot-down in southern Iran is real," warned OPSGROUP, a company that provides guidance to global airlines.
The FAA made a similar warning in May to commercial airliners of the possibility of Iranian anti-aircraft gunners mistaking them for military aircraft, something dismissed by Tehran some 30 years after the US Navy shot down an Iranian passenger jet.
Iran had no immediate reaction to the US announcement.
The FAA said its warning would affect the area of the Tehran Flight Information Region, without elaborating.
That area probably only extends about 20 kilometres off of the Iranian coast, aviation experts said.
There are "heightened military activities and increased political tensions in the region, which present an inadvertent risk to US civil aviation operations and potential for miscalculation or misidentification," the FAA said.
"The risk to US civil aviation is demonstrated by the Iranian surface-to-air missile shoot-down of a US unmanned aircraft system on 19 June 2019 while it was operating in the vicinity of civil air routes above the Gulf of Oman."
The Persian Gulf is home to some of the world's top long-haul carriers, who already have been battered by Trump's travel bans targeting a group of predominantly Muslim countries, as well as an earlier ban on laptops in aeroplane cabins for Mideast carriers.
The US is sending more troops to the middle east region as tensions with Iran escalate. (AAP) Source: AP
The major carriers, Etihad, Emirates and Qatar Airways, as well as low-cost carriers, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
