AT A GLANCE
This week: the Gulf airspace crisis, four weeks in.
What's actually operational, who's winning, who's bleeding, and why the recovery will take longer than anyone's admitting.
Also: Qatar Airways is storing 20 aircraft in Teruel, Air India just added 36 weekly frequencies to Europe, and oil crossed $150 before anyone had time to update their fuel hedging models.
5-MINUTES READ
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THIS WEEK’S TOP STORY
The Hole In The Sky
Source: Altaf Qadri / Associated Press
It's been four weeks since the US and Israel struck Iranian military targets on February 28. Iran hit back across the Gulf. And aviation got its biggest disruption since COVID. Except this time, nobody saw it coming and there's no vaccine.
Here's where we are as of this week.
What's closed: Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Syria, and Bahrain are shut to all civilian flights. Have been since day one. Kuwait's airport hasn't handled a scheduled departure in a month. The US Embassy there closed on March 20.
What's sort-of open: The UAE and Qatar are running under ESCAT (Emergency Security Control of Air Traffic), which sounds fancy but basically means "you can fly, maybe, if we approve it, through one narrow corridor, and we might close everything again at 3am with no warning." Dubai is at roughly 75% of its pre-war capacity. Etihad is around half. Qatar Airways is at 20%.
TWENTY PERCENT
What's fully open: Muscat, which is becoming the accidental hub of 2026. Cairo. Istanbul. Riyadh operates with restrictions but keeps the lights on. Saudi free-route airspace is suddenly the most strategically important corridor in global aviation. The Saudis will be very happy about that.
What it costs: Afghanistan charges a flat $700 to cross its airspace, and yes, that's per flight. Rerouting via the Caucasus-Afghanistan corridor or south through Egypt-Saudi-Oman adds 2-4 hours per flight. Jet fuel hit $150+ per barrel and hasn't come back down. Air India slapped $50-85 surcharges on long-haul tickets within days. War-risk insurance? Multiple Lloyd's syndicates pulled coverage entirely for Gulf routes.
United's Scott Kirby said publicly the airline is "preparing for a long fallout" from oil prices. He's not being dramatic. When fuel accounts for 30% of operating costs and the price doubles in four weeks, the math doesn't require a finance degree.
THE ANGLE
There's a comforting narrative floating around that this is a short-term disruption and the Gulf hubs will bounce back, like they always do.
I don't think that's wrong, exactly. But it misses the bigger picture.
This is the third major disruption to Gulf airspace in three years. Houthi attacks in the Red Sea rerouted cargo traffic. The Pakistan-India crisis in May 2025 closed the Kashmir corridor. And now the Iran war has punched a hole through the center of the world's most important aviation corridor.
Each time, the industry treats it as an aberration. Each time, it's surprised when the next one happens.
The Gulf corridor isn't infrastructure in the way that a runway or a terminal is infrastructure. It's a geopolitical asset that can be switched off overnight by events no airline or airport can control. Building your network strategy around the assumption that Dubai-Doha-Abu Dhabi will always be available is like building your house on a floodplain and acting shocked when it rains.
The carriers investing in non-stop range (the A321XLR deployments, the 787 point-to-point routes, the direct Europe-Asia pairs that bypass the Gulf entirely) look very smart right now. Not because anyone predicted this specific conflict, but because optionality is worth paying for.
Who's winning: Air India added 36 additional weekly frequencies to Europe and North America between March 19-28. That's 10,000+ incremental seats in ten days. Turkish Airlines is printing money on rerouted traffic. Lufthansa and Air France are quietly adding capacity on routes they'd normally cede to Gulf carriers.
Who's bleeding: Qatar Airways parked 20 widebodies in Teruel, Spain. The same desert aircraft boneyard that filled up during COVID. Ethiopian Airlines lost $137 million in a single week. Gulf Air is operating out of Dammam because Bahrain is closed. Smaller African and South Asian carriers dependent on Gulf connectivity are getting crushed with no one paying attention.
QUICK HITS
🔴 HIGH
British Airways extended cancellations to Dubai, Amman, Bahrain, and Tel Aviv through the end of May. Doha through April. Not optimism.
🔴 HIGH
The Strait of Hormuz is effectively closed to commercial shipping. Iran's Defence Council warned that any attack on coastal territory triggers mining of all access routes. Brent crude is above $100 after a brief dip. Shipping analysts say Hormuz may not reopen in 2026.
🟡 WATCH
EASA's Conflict Zone Information Bulletin is being updated every few days. Current version advises avoiding airspace of 11 countries. If you operate in the region, you should be reading these updates daily, not weekly.
🟡 WATCH
Long-haul fares could rise 25% in coming months as fuel surcharges cascade. Carriers that hedged fuel aggressively in 2025 have a six-month cushion. Everyone else is exposed.
🟢 CONTEXT
The UAE briefly closed its entire airspace overnight on March 16-17 as a "precautionary measure" during new missile threats. The fact that this happened two weeks into the crisis, not on day one, tells you the security situation is still volatile, not stabilising.
THE NUMBER
20
The number of Qatar Airways aircraft currently parked in Teruel, Spain. Widebody jets. In a desert storage facility. Because there's nowhere to fly them.
The last time Teruel filled up with parked widebodies was 2020. The airline that's frequently voted the world's best is storing planes in a Spanish town of 36,000 people because Doha operates at 20% capacity and there's no timeline for when that changes.
If that image doesn't tell you everything about the severity of this crisis, nothing will.
WORTH READING
Aviation Week: How Middle East networks are being disrupted
Good breakdown of how European and Asian carriers are redeploying capacity to fill the gaps left by grounded Gulf services.
CNN: The hole in the sky: How Middle East airspace closures are reshaping global aviation
Aimed at a general audience but the Flightradar24 visualizations of empty airspace are genuinely striking. Good for sending to people outside the industry who keep asking "wait, what's happening?"
Airline Revenue Economics: Who is right? Michael O'Leary or Elon Musk?
O'Leary says 5% of Ryanair passengers would pay for Starlink WiFi. A conjoint analysis of 1,000+ UK travelers says 38%. The difference is £830 million in annual net contribution. One of the sharpest pieces of ancillary revenue analysis I've read this year.
This is Issue #8 of The Departure Times. Also the relaunch. I wrote this newsletter for five issues back in 2024, then disappeared. Life got complicated, work got busy, the usual.
I'm back because the industry is going through something genuinely unprecedented and the coverage is split between paywalled trade press that reads like a compliance document and consumer aviation media that thinks "21,300 flights cancelled" is the whole story.
There's room for something in between. Smart and fun. Depth and personality. Free.
Every Tuesday. You're here, so you already know what to expect.
Hit reply and tell me: what's the most underreported part of this crisis from where you sit? I read every response.
P.S. If this was useful, forward it to one colleague who should be reading it. That's the best thing you can do for a newsletter with less than 100 subscribers and zero marketing budget.
Thanks for being here.
See you next week!
Máté
