The war in the Middle East has exposed Europe’s heavy reliance on Gulf airlines for connections to Asia, as widespread airspace disruptions force carriers to reroute flights and rethink long-haul strategies, European airline officials said Thursday.
Since breaking out on Feb. 28, the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran has severely disrupted air traffic above the Gulf countries, which have carved out a niche as a stopover for long-haul flights between the United States, Europe, Asia and Oceania.
In the wake of Tehran's retaliatory strikes across the region, tens of thousands of flights have been cancelled, affecting millions of passengers.
Many European travellers have found themselves stranded in Asia, unable to pass through the key hubs of Dubai, Doha and Abu Dhabi. Those three airports are the respective headquarters of Emirates, Qatar Airways and Etihad, all of which have become big-hitters in the long-distance flights market.
"With 600 aeroplanes on the ground and 100 of them that normally were going in and out of Europe, it is a bit of a wake-up call to show how dependent the European continent is on Gulf carriers," the CEO of Air France-KLM, Benjamin Smith, told a press conference of the Airlines for Europe (A4E) association on Thursday in Brussels.
Since the start of the conflict, the Franco-Dutch group, its German competitor Lufthansa and Asian airlines serving long-distance routes have all announced an increase in direct Europe-Asia flights.
"This is an example of what we would like to be doing, to be able to do this year-round, irrespective of the crisis that is going on," Smith added.
A4E, which also counts Lufthansa, British Airways-parent IAG, Ryanair and easyJet among its members, had been loudly critical of the European Union's open skies deal with Qatar, in force since 2021.
A4E managing director Ourania Georgoutsakou argued that the current crisis presented "an opportunity to fix things in Europe and to reconsider how we manage aviation and how we manage airlines and how we've managed to put ourselves at the back foot here in Europe."
Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr pointed to the example of Europe now being "cut off" from the Philippines as the continent's airlines had passed off the route to the now-grounded Gulf airlines.
"We used to fly to Manila. Our friends used to fly to Manila," Spohr said, referring to Lufthansa's European rivals.
"So I think people are realizing we are losing sovereignty (by) depending on others."
