By DAMIAN FRANCIS, Editorial Director
Over the last week there has been a dangerous amount of hearsay flowing around the mainsteam media about the crisis in the Middle East, particularly how it affects travel.
In a crowded media market battling dwindling attention spans, it’s no surprise that they are looking for an eye-catching headline or pull quote to alarm the audience.
No doubt by now we have all heard some of the travel industry hearsay as well. The stories about the enormous amount of re-bookings that advisors have done in a matter of just a few days, or the impossibility of getting a flight on an Asian carrier to try and bypass the situation for those heading to Europe.
ATIA boss Dean Long did the heavy lifting in terms of pushing the non-alarmist narrative yesterday, particularly in terms of panic cancellations, so I will refrain from doing that today.
What I will do, though, is deal with some definitive numbers. What does the situation look like, particularly from an aviation standpoint?
I, along with others I spoke to on Thursday and Friday, were surprised to see as many Emirates, Qatar and Etihad flights in the air between Australia and the Middle East as there were at the end of the week. Mainly Emirates flights.
Three Emirates A380s were almost in unison exiting Australian skies heading towards a war zone on Thursday morning, one each from Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney.
On Friday morning we saw more action as an Etihad A350 made the dash into Australia, while Emirates continued to get planes out – a trio from Melbourne (two A380s and a 777) leaving early in the morning, joined by an A380 heading out of Auckland.
Earlier this week I had contacted major airports to see what was on the ground from the Middle East – Melbourne Airport was hosting 10 aircraft, five of which were from Emirates.
It has a significant number of planes out of place – they can’t just sit on the tarmac at foreign airports indefinitely.
Looking globally, the same trend was occurring – Emirates the most active in movement while Etihad took cautious first steps and Qatar, quite reasonably, laid fairly low.
This, of course, is just a moment in time – as I write, it’s Friday at 10:41am.
Emirates have the most aircraft in the air at the moment, with 74 flights, largely in and out of Dubai to places around the world.
After Dubai’s airport and some well-known hotels were attacked recently, it’s a quick reignition of service for the airline.
Etihad’s numbers aren’t as high (it’s not as big an airline, either), with 11 flights in the air at the moment. It was 12 a couple of hours ago, with one having recently landed in Sydney.
Qatar on the other hand, whose home city of Doha has borne the brunt of the attacks out of the three in question, has just eight planes in the air, but critically, they are all connecting European or South American ports with Muscat or Riyadh, not Doha.
A lone QR A350 randomly shows up on and off at Doha airport, being kept company by an Emiri Air Force EuroFighter Typhoon.
In terms of traffic for the three airports since the crisis broke out, this is what the numbers have looked like.
The data here has been collated from FlightRadar24, using Copilot AI to plot it.
It’s an environment that has created opportunity for the Asian carriers.
As reported by Business Times Singapore, “A one-way economy ticket flying Singapore Airlines from Heathrow to Singapore on 05 March costs HK$66,767 (S$10,916) – a 900% increase on fares later in the month. The same ticket on a flight to Hong Kong is HK$26,737, compared with HK$5,670 in just a few weeks from now”.
Flight database OAG has stated that Emirates, Qatar and Etihad suspensions had removed 10% of daily international flight capacity.
Is there light at the end of the tunnel? For aviation, potentially, and it may come sooner rather than later, even if the conflict carries on for months or more.
Warning, we’re going to have to shift out of confirmed data and back into the land of hearsay, but it might be worth it to end on a positive.
In an interview with Seven’s Sunrise on Friday, former Qantas and RAAF pilot Richard Woodward said, “I suspect what will happen is that the Americans and the Israelis will be degrading Iran’s capabilities to fire missiles at all these people and they’ll be knocking off the drone and missile storage areas – they will eventually peter out and run down and then [air] traffic out of some of these states will pick back up again.”
He suggested that could only take “three or four days” even if the conflict continued, making the skies around the region substantially safer.
THE REST OF THE WEEK
If you’re looking to read something other than Middle East updates, I’m happy to help you out here.
Travel Daily editor Adam Bishop reported on a fascinating story of former travel agency owner Josh Zuker, who has criticised a gap in Victoria’s civil justice system, which he claims left him personally exposed to repeated enforcement orders relating to a refund dispute that was resolved several years ago.
It feels like there is more to come with this story.
Meanwhile, NCLH remains in the headlines, battling a few headwinds – this week Cruise Weekly reported that it had delivered a solid Q4 2025, but is already under pressure for Q1 2026 due to its large capacity increase in the Caribbean.
It was a busy week for Dean Long as well, with ATIA reaffirming the World Travel Agents Associations Alliance’s (WTAAA) warning regarding a global fraud scheme that uses IATA accreditation numbers to issue fake airline tickets.
And still on ATIA, the ever-popular Emmalita Malmberg was confirmed to lead the Association’s corporate partnerships, in a new role commencing 09 Mar.
In slightly softer news, more than half (57%) of Australians have been left disappointed after following travel advice from social media influencers, new research from Insure&Go has revealed. I’ll refrain from commenting on that…
This weekend will be a busy one for the cruise sector, with CLIA’s annual awards on Saturday night at the ICC in Sydney.
I’ll be there with Cruise Weekly editor Myles Stedman. If you’re attending, come and say hello.
Enjoy the weekend,
Damian
