No winners in Gulf crisis

13 Jun 2017 2098 | World Travel News

DUBAI, 13 June 2017: Qatar Airways has made Doha a global hub in just a few years, but barring it from Gulf states’ airspace threatens its position as a major transcontinental carrier, experts say.

Along with its Gulf peers — Dubai’s Emirates Airlines and Abu Dhabi’s Etihad — Qatar’s national carrier has captured a sizable portion of transit travel, capitalising on the Gulf’s central geographic location.

But political differences between Qatar and neighbouring Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, as well as Egypt, exploded last week into a full-blown regional crisis, including severing air links.

The measures meant cancelling dozens of daily flights by Qatar Airways and carriers from those countries, and also mean Qatari aircraft have to make long diversions, mainly around Bahrain and the vast airspace of Saudi Arabia.

“The impact is already bad because it has driven up flight times and therefore costs. As the airspace tightens, the problem grows much worse,” said aviation analyst Addison Schonland from US-based AirInsight.

“Operationally, this is a constraint for the airline that is almost certainly now seeing its profits cut deeply,” he added.

Qatar is almost completely encircled by Bahraini airspace that covers a large part of Gulf waters, and its planes usually cross Saudi airspace on their way to the rest of the Middle East, Africa and South America.

Qatari planes are now instead using Iran’s airspace to get to Europe and skirting the southeastern tip of the Arabian Peninsula to avoid Saudi territory.

Increased flight times

The flight time for a Qatar Airways trip to Sao Paulo in Brazil, for example, has increased by around two hours, according to flight detecting websites.

Flights to North Africa are now travelling over Iran and Turkey towards the Mediterranean, instead of flying more directly over Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

However, flights to Europe appear largely unaffected as they continue to use the Iran route, with a just small diversion to avoid Bahraini airspace.