Gulf Air

Is Gulf Air safe?

Yes, on its record of the last 25 years. Bahrain's national airline has not had a fatal accident or lost an aircraft since flight GF072 crashed into the sea off Bahrain in August 2000, and its 46 aircraft are Boeing 787-9s and Airbus A320-family jets, with new A321neos still arriving. The catch is location. Bahrain hosts the US Navy's Fifth Fleet, Iran struck it from the first day of the 2026 war, and the airline's home airport was shut for almost six weeks. We score Gulf Air 80, just below Emirates (81) and below its nearest neighbour Qatar Airways (87).

What happened on flight GF072?

On 23 August 2000 an A320 from Cairo arrived at Bahrain too high and too fast. Instead of going around, the captain flew a tight 360-degree turn at low altitude close to the runway, then abandoned the approach anyway. During the climb-out the aircraft pitched 15 degrees nose down and hit the shallow sea about 2 km from the airport. All 143 people on board died.

Bahrain's investigators found no single cause. The crew probably became disoriented in the dark over water and ignored repeated ground proximity warnings; the first officer did not challenge the captain. The report also pointed at the airline: weak crew resource management training, a flight data monitoring system that was not working properly and a safety department with "a number of deficiencies". The regulator of the day, Oman's DGCAM (the A320 was on the Omani register), had tried for three years without success to make Gulf Air fix several critical findings.

That history matters less today than it once did. The ownership, the register, the regulator and the fleet have all changed, and the 26 years since are clean of deaths. But a crash caused partly by organisational failings is the reason the accident score is 84 rather than the 90s.

Gulf Air's other written-off aircraft are older still: an A320 that overran at Abu Dhabi after a rejected take-off in 1997 and a Shorts Skyvan lost off Das Island in 1976, both without deaths, and a Boeing 737 destroyed by a bomb near Jebel Ali in 1983, which we leave out of the accident score.

How did the 2026 Iran war affect Gulf Air?

Badly. Bahrain closed its airspace on 28 February 2026, the day the war started. Gulf Air ran a reduced network out of Dammam in Saudi Arabia through March, with flights to London, Paris, Athens, Istanbul, Dhaka and Kochi, and ferried its aircraft home only after a ceasefire let Bahrain reopen on 7 April. Its first scheduled flight from Bahrain afterwards was to Riyadh on 9 April.

The Bahrain country page covers the attacks on land, including the drone strikes on the Fifth Fleet headquarters and on homes in Sitra and Manama. For an airline the useful document is EASA's conflict zone bulletin CZIB-2026-07R3, valid to 16 November 2026. It tells European airlines not to fly over the waters of the Gulf at any altitude except to land at or take off from airports there, and to take care over land, citing missile and drone overflights, interceptions and the risk of air defences misidentifying airliners. Bahrain is an island, so every Gulf Air flight starts and ends inside that zone.

That is why operating environment scores 55. It is not a judgement on Gulf Air's crews; the airline cannot move its hub.

What incidents count against it?

None killed anyone, but several point to crews and procedures:

• Kochi, August 2011. An A320 landing in rain and 2,000 m visibility drifted right of the centreline, ran onto the soft ground and collapsed its nose gear. Seven passengers were hurt. India's inquiry blamed the captain's loss of situational awareness.
• Mumbai diversion, May 2016. An A330 from Manila hit severe turbulence; one passenger needed stitches for a head wound.
• Peshawar, April 2017. An A330 with a brake problem failed to stop within the runway after a Mayday call. Pakistan's investigators classed it as a serious incident.
• Lahore, March 2022. An A321 side-stepped to the parallel runway at 600 feet because the crew thought its assigned runway was closed, then went around from the threshold.
• Bahrain, October 2023. Two A320s lost cabin pressure on climb-out within three days; both crews declared emergencies and returned safely.
• Manila, November 2025. A 787-9 missed its taxiway turn and entered the runway without clearance, forcing a PAL Express A320 on short final to go around.

That is more runway events abroad than the cleanest Gulf airlines have. We found no fines or groundings by a regulator.

Who oversees Gulf Air?

Bahrain's Civil Aviation Affairs, part of the transport ministry. The FAA rates Bahrain Category 1FAA IASAThe US FAA's check of whether a country's aviation regulator meets ICAO standards. Category 1 means it does; Category 2 means it does not.More in the glossary, no Bahraini airline is on the EU Air Safety ListEU Air Safety ListThe European Commission's list of airlines banned or restricted from flying in EU airspace because they do not meet international safety standards.More in the glossary, and Gulf Air is an IATA member, which means it passes an IOSAIOSAThe IATA Operational Safety Audit, an international audit of an airline's safety management and operations. Every IATA member must pass it.More in the glossary audit every two years. Bahrain publishes few investigation reports in English, so most of the incidents above are known from foreign investigators and flight tracking.

How to fly Gulf Air safely

Book flexible fares while the CZIB stays in force: closures in 2026 came with a few hours' notice and lasted weeks. Through Bahrain, keep your connection long enough to absorb a reroute. On board, the incidents worth knowing about were pressure losses and turbulence, so keep your seat belt loosely fastened when seated and pull an oxygen mask on at once if one drops.

How we scored it

The accident record (84) reflects GF072 in 2000 and a clean quarter-century since. Oversight (84) and a fleet of 787s and A320-family jets (86) are solid. Serious incidents (72) reflect the runway events at Peshawar, Lahore and Manila, and environment (55) is the weakest factor because the hub sits inside an active conflict zone. Overall 80.