Aircraft Operators Face Complex Risk Management Calls

For weeks, aircraft operators have dealt with heightened security concerns due to the impending threat of further military conflict between the U.S. and Iran. While the two sides started indirect diplomatic talks in Oman on Friday, experts say the situation—along with other current geopolitical fracture points, such as Venezuela—requires relentless vigilance to keep flights safe.

At Osprey Flight Solutions, chief intelligence officer Matthew Borie tells clients they need to have a consistent risk assessment methodology. This can be populated with timely and accurate information about shifting risks that, when assessed in the context of each company’s risk tolerance, provides managers with specific mitigation steps that could include canceling flights or avoiding some airspace.

The prospect of the U.S. attacking Iran, which has threatened to counter-attack Gulf allies, is a classic case in point. In recent weeks, several airlines have temporarily cancelled flights to some airports in the region and made tactical shifts in flight planning.

Timing is everything, and this is where Borie said examining the most relevant information makes a big difference. Osprey’s team pays a lot of attention to movements of key military assets, such as warships and combat aircraft, and GPS signal interference, among other factors.

Counting Fighters and Missiles

In the early stages of the latest round of tensions between the U.S. and Iran, Osprey’s main takeaway was that the Pentagon simply didn’t have sufficient assets in place to make imminent attacks likely. It based this assessment on the firepower that had been in place during earlier flashpoints, such as attacks in April 2024 and June 2025.

“Our assessment [in mid-January when President Donald Trump threatened to attack Iran] was that despite the protests and what the U.S. was saying, strikes [were] unlikely in a 7- to 14-day timeframe,” Borie told AIN. “The objective data point for escalation had not been met, but now fighter jets, air defenses, and aircraft carriers have arrived, which are key indicators of military strikes. We look for objective data to fill subjective gaps.”

Osprey also uses satellite imagery to assess whether military bases are gearing up for defensive or offensive action. It has applied this to assess the response readiness and related threats to airspace safety of both Iran and Venezuela.

In late November 2025, when U.S. action in Venezuela was already in the cards, Osprey warned clients to expect air strikes within six weeks. Barely four weeks later, the attacks came, and the airspace was closed at short notice.

After Iran, Who’s Next?

If timing is everything, then anticipating knock-on consequences is a big part of getting this right. “After the first shots [are fired in Iran], you might still be flying to Dubai, but you have to have already assessed second or third order effects [such as Iranian drone or missile strikes in countries including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Israel, and Iraq].”

According to Borie, airlines are sharpening their preparedness to security threats, partly in response to the 2023 edition of ICAO’s Doc 10084 Risk Assessment Manual for Civil Aircraft Operations Over or Near Conflict Zones. This was updated in the wake of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

The problem for aircraft operators is that the global scope of “over or near conflict zones” has expanded significantly in recent years due to countless, sometimes overlapping, geopolitical fracture points. From Russia’s polar airspace to Yemen, the safe airspace gaps are getting harder to navigate, and this is creating headaches and rising costs. Airlines flying between Asia and Europe have to rely on the Central Asian and Middle East airspace corridors, and the latter now seem to be threatened with further disruption.

Osprey advises its clients to automate their risk management process to make the steps consistent and repeatable in high-pressure situations. It also warns against depending on mainstream media and social media as information sources, without the risk of manipulation being mitigated by other sources. Operators’ decisions can be driven by their own governments’ security policies and insurance cover restrictions, for which war risk premiums can make some commercial routes unviable.

“Try to avoid risk acceptance or avoidance coming down to one individual so that it doesn’t matter who is on shift at the time,” Borie advised. “Everyone at the operator should be involved in the [risk management] oversight so that you don’t have a blame culture. Then you can make the right decisions, whether to escalate or de-escalate responses, based on your risk tolerance.”

Osprey Flight Solutions is once again partnering with EASA, Transport Malta, and the UK’s University of Southampton to stage the 2026 edition of the World Overflight Risk Conference. The event will be held in Malta from April 20 to 22 with an agenda covering geopolitical instability, cybersecurity, hybrid warfare, and drone threats.