Event
ECE Special Seminar - Dr. Eric Feron, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology
Tuesday, November 3, 2026
1:00 p.m.-2:00 p.m.
2460 A.V. Williamd
Darcy Long
301 405 3114
dlong123@umd.edu
Speaker: Dr. Eric Feron, Professor, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia
Talk Title: From regional traffic reorganization to sector-level airspace responses: The case of the 28 February 2026 Middle East airspace disruption and its aftermath
Abstract: Large-scale airspace disruptions can reorganize civil aviation traffic far beyond the directly affected airspace. This study examines the 28 February 2026 Middle East airspace disruption resulting from the onset of the US-Iran war by analyzing traffic observations in a period of about two weeks surrounding the event. It first establishes a multi-scale empirical picture of the disruption, from intercontinental route detours to corridor redistribution across the Middle East and traffic changes in Saudi Arabia. Building on this evidence, a trajectory-computable framework is developed to identify temporal changes in regional traffic structure and characterize sector-level operational responses. The results show that the regional traffic structure departs rapidly from its baseline configuration during the initial disruption period and subsequently settles into a distinct and comparatively stable post-event regime with limited day-to-day variation. Within the Jeddah Flight Information Region, the redistribution is spatially uneven.
The findings presented here show that major airspace disruptions are better understood as structural reorganizations of traffic rather than simple regional traffic losses.
Bio: Eric Feron is Professor of Electrical, Computer, and Mechanical Engineering at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia. Prior to that, Feron has been working with many academic and research institutions world-wide, including MIT, Cambridge, USA, and École Nationale de l'Aviation Civile, Toulouse, France. His interests are using fundamental concepts of control systems, optimization theory and computer science to address problems in aerospace and transportation engineering, including air transportation. Feron is a fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
