On 28 February 2026, a joint military attack by the United States (US) and Israel against Iran significantly escalated geopolitical tensions across the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean. The resulting closure and disruption of regional airspace temporarily displaced major commercial flight routes and exposed the vulnerability of the aerial networks that underpin contemporary international connectivity. While such disruptions are often treated as short-term consequences of geopolitical crises, they also reveal a broader structural issue: the functioning of transnational connectivity depends not only on what happens on the ground and at sea, but also in the air.

The expansion of contemporary economic corridors has been driven by efforts to connect markets, production centres, ports, and cities through increasingly integrated networks of infrastructure. Initiatives such as China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the European Union (EU)’s Global Gateway, and the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) exemplify this broader transformation of connectivity. Yet these projects and the scholarship surrounding them continue to be conceptualised predominantly through terrestrial and maritime infrastructures. This paper argues that such a horizontal understanding of corridorization provides only a partial account of how connectivity is produced and sustained.

Instead, the paper examines the aerial dimension of economic corridors and asks how air connectivity and airspace interact with terrestrial and maritime infrastructure. Drawing on the Euro-Mediterranean region as a case study, it explores how airports, air routes, and airspace contribute to the movement of goods and people and how their integration with existing corridor infrastructures can reshape regional connectivity. By bringing the aerial dimension into the analysis, the paper seeks to develop a more comprehensive understanding of economic corridors as multidimensional infrastructures rather than exclusively horizontal networks.