According to aviation analytics company Cirium, of around 4,218 flights scheduled to land in Middle Eastern countries yesterday, 966 (22.9 per cent) were cancelled, with the figure rising above 1,800 if also including outbound flights, Reuters reports.

For Sunday, 716 flights out of 4,329 scheduled to the Middle East have been cancelled, Cirium said.

Flight tracking website FlightAware, meanwhile, said more than 19,000 flights had been delayed globally, and more than 2,600 were cancelled as of 2:30am GMT.