{"id":203362,"date":"2026-03-08T14:58:37","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T14:58:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/airline-groundings-expose-depth-of-world-travels-reliance-on-gulf-corridor-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2026-03-08T14:58:37","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T14:58:37","slug":"airline-groundings-expose-depth-of-world-travels-reliance-on-gulf-corridor-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/airline-groundings-expose-depth-of-world-travels-reliance-on-gulf-corridor-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"Airline groundings expose depth of world travel\u2019s reliance on Gulf corridor – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Restart of operations will be a relief to those stranded but may not dispel doubts raised by past week about key transit hub
Middle East crisis \u2013 follow live<\/a>
A<\/span>fter nearly a week of uncertainty, airspace closures and very limited flights, news that hundreds of thousands of passengers around the world were hanging on for emerged: the Gulf-based carrier Emirates was restarting operations in earnest despite the US-Israel war on Iran<\/a>.
Those relieved by the restart will include the UK\u2019s Foreign Office, after its travails in organising delayed rescue flights out of neighbouring Oman<\/a>.
Emirates plans to return to 11 daily flights to five British airports by Saturday, and will operate to 60% of its full network, 83 destinations in all, including seven US airports and a total of 22 daily flights to India.
Yet the partial return will struggle to dispel the doubts raised by a week when many started to wonder, just where will the world fly now?
Before the crisis, the three big Gulf hubs \u2013 Dubai, home of Emirates, Abu Dhabi for Etihad and Qatar<\/a> Airways\u2019 Doha base \u2013 had established themselves as the crossroads of global aviation, with networks that link Asia, Africa, Europe and reaching out to the Americas and Oceania.
Nearly 300,000 people pass through one of the three hubs every day and about two-thirds are heading straight through on a connecting flight. The closure of Russian and Ukrainian airspace to European carriers after the invasion of Ukraine has pushed eastbound traffic south into a small, uncertain corridor. For passengers on many routes, a Gulf connection had become the cheapest, quickest and possibly the nicest way to fly.
When the US-Israeli bombing of Iran began<\/a> a week ago, and retaliatory rockets and drones closed the Gulf airports, aviation\u2019s traffic jam rippled back across continents.
Those in the actual war zone might shed few tears for the British tourists complaining of being stuck in \u201ca holiday from hell\u201d in Thai hotels, or those wondering how to reach Europe from Australia. Yet many of those stranded were only passing through, bewildered to find a one-hour transfer had turned into a lounge-side seat in a developing war.
The sheer volume of traffic meant that even a few days\u2019 backlog left governments praying for a resumption of Gulf carrier operations as the only feasible way to get citizens home. With only a partial closure of UAE airspace, Etihad on Friday followed Emirates in restarting limited services, primarily for repatriation; Qatar\u2019s airspace, 200 miles west along the Gulf, remains fully closed.
According to the aviation analyst John Grant, on a normal day about 70% of Abu Dhabi\u2019s Zayed airport\u2019s 55,000 passengers would be transiting. A far greater proportion of Dubai\u2019s 175,000 passengers, 55%, remain in a city where tourism has boomed and many of those travelling beyond may have a stopover stay.
\u201cThe longer it goes, the more people\u2019s travel expectations are going to be changed,\u201d says the aviation analyst Andrew Charlton. \u201cPassengers are going to have to found other ways to get around, and destination selections are going to be changed.\u201d
The tourist hit to the region could be significant: Oxford Economics estimates that a short conflict could mean a drop of 11% in visitors to the Middle East this year, with a $34bn (\u00a325bn) loss in spending.
However, the choice for many who transit may not be simple: on routes from Australia to the UK, for example, the number of flights that go via those hubs far outweigh the rival options from airlines such as Thai, Cathay Pacific or Singapore, Grant says.
Two-thirds of the world\u2019s population is within an eight-hour flight of the Gulf, and geography has underpinned the travel hub\u2019s success. Longer flights are available \u2013 and Qantas may further its Project Sunrise ambitions of direct Sydney-London flights if the Gulf is out of action for longer. But ratio of fuel burned simply to carry its own weight becomes increasingly inefficient beyond the 3,000-4,000 miles of a UK-Gulf connection.
The Middle East airlines have been an integral part of the growth of petrostate capitals into big international players, across politics, sport and aviation: sovereign wealth billions spent on the rebranding of football stadiums and strips with airline logos, and on mega-orders for the very biggest, newest, fuel-efficient and most luxurious planes.
Breakthroughs in aircraft design, the twin-engine 777 long before the 380, coincided with the appetite for growth, as Gulf aviation rapidly built up new airport hubs and fleets, without some of the planning restrictions or employment rights required elsewhere. The former Qatar Airways chief executive Akbar Al Baker notoriously contrasted his young cabin crew, who were housed under strict conditions in Doha<\/a> blocks, with US airlines\u2019 \u201cgrandmothers\u201d.
The Airbus A380 superjumbo, the biggest passenger plane ever built, proved too big a prospect for many airlines and airports to handle. But for Emirates, with space, ambition and deep-pocketed backers, this juggernaut of the skies has helped propel enormous growth, in mass passenger transit as well as the scope for luxurious refits.
The race for the top end has seen Emirates install shower-spas in first class; business class passengers have to settle for personal minibars and all the caviar they can eat. Etihad this year aimed to trump that with a \u201chotel suite\u201d including a full double-bed in the nose of the plane.
The grounding of planes during Covid may provide faith that growth will persist beyond current difficulties. In perhaps a subconscious echo of the looming conflict, the president of Emirates, Tim Clark, commented at a governmental summit in Dubai last month that in five years since Covid, \u201cour profits have gone up \u2013 almost nuclear\u201d.
While the US ostensible aim of the conflict is to curb the atomic ambitions of Tehran, plenty of Americans would not worry about denting the businesses of Iran\u2019s neighbours; big airlines long lobbied the White House to stop the Gulf carriers flying into the US.
However, the ramifications could go a lot further, with all aviation vulnerable to the current oil price shock caused by the halt in shipping through the strait of Hormuz, which is responsible for 20% of the world\u2019s flows.
The cost of a barrel of Brent crude soared past $90 on Friday, up from about $72.50 before the war. Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 sent the price of jet fuel beyond the dizzying peaks of 2008; the spikes now occurring in Asian markets suggest a prolonged war will push kerosene to record highs.
At British Airways\u2019 owner, IAG, fuel last year accounted for about 25% of its costs, just over \u20ac7bn (\u00a36.1bn). While it has hedged 40% of its jet fuel bill for next year \u2013 buying in advance at an agreed price \u2013 other airlines\u2019 profits are even more exposed.
Credit ratings agencies are ready to downgrade a host of airlines if hostilities continue and the oil prices remain high. Rachel Gerrish, a credit analyst as S&P Global Ratings, says the agencies would be watching \u201chow rising fuel prices, operational disruptions, and shifts in consumer demand develop\u201d.
At airlines that do not hedge fuel \u2013 many in the US \u2013 profits are in jeopardy. That includes the Hungarian airline Wizz Air, which on Thursday issued a \u20ac50m profit warning over the impact of the war in the Gulf.
For travellers, it could mean higher fares \u2013 hedged or not. Garrish says that S&P\u2019s rated airlines including BA, easyJet and Ryanair \u201ctypically have a good track record of passing on elevated fuel prices to customers\u201d. A loss of Middle East capacity will almost certainly drive up long-haul fares, as demand outstrips supply.
Should UAE flights falter and aviation\u2019s Gulf crossroads be blocked again, Istanbul could be a big winner, and other airlines may provide some alternatives, says Charlton. \u201cMost European carriers had abandoned ship on routes to Asia. The question is how quickly can they react? And African carriers like Ethiopian and Kenyans, if traffic goes north-south, could be back in the game.\u201d
He suspects, however, not for long: \u201cThe old-time airline guy in me says, Emirates will get their traffic back. They\u2019ll offer cheap tickets, and it\u2019s never failed in the past \u2013 it got everyone back to flying after the pandemic. Then they ramped up the ticket prices, and we still travelled.\u201d<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Restart of operations will be a relief to those stranded but may not dispel doubts raised by past week about key transit hubMiddle East crisis \u2013 follow liveAfter nearly a week of uncertainty, airspace closures and very limited flights, news that hundreds of thousands of passengers around the world were hanging on for emerged: the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":203363,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-203362","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203362\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}