The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

By Oliver Taslic

LONDON, March 9 (Reuters Breakingviews) - At a European airline summit last year, Deutsche Lufthansa LHAG.DE CEO Carsten Spohr told attendees that the carrier used to fly to 10 destinations in Southeast Asia. Now, he said, it was just two. Gulf rivals like Emirates and Etihad, Russian airspace closures and strict environmental rules made Europe’s eastbound routes uncompetitive. With war in the Middle East restricting airports and airspace, European carriers’ westward pivot offers some protection. Passengers aren’t so lucky.

Iranian drone and missile attacks on the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and other Gulf states have unleashed travel chaos and seen European jet fuel prices rise over 70%. The STOXX Europe Airlines Index is down almost 9% this month, compared to a roughly 5% fall for the STOXX 600. In the conflict’s opening days, over 21,000 flights were cancelled across airports like Dubai International, according to Flightradar24. Suddenly, direct routes between Europe and Asia are in hot demand: Reuters checks found one-way tickets from Hong Kong to London on Cathay Pacific costing over HK$21,000 (around $2,700), more than three times the usual fare. As of Monday, flights in the region remained well below normal levels.

That’s an issue for the roughly one-third of passengers who make their way from Europe to Asia on Emirates, Qatar Airways or Etihad, according to Cirium data cited by Reuters. Hoovering up these flows helped Dubai become the world’s busiest airport by international seats, per travel data provider OAG. Doha is only the tenth largest, but it’s fast-growing: seats increased over 20% between 2019 and 2025. Though not publicly traded, the Gulf carriers are also a financial force: Emirates reported over $34 billion of revenue in its latest financial year – more than U.S. giant Southwest – and a chunky 17% operating margin.

For European carriers like Lufthansa, Iberia owner IAG and Air France-KLM AIRF.PA, fighting Gulf airlines for eastbound flows keeps getting tougher. In 2022, Russia closed its airspace to many carriers, making flights to Asia longer and costlier. There’s also the burden of European Union environmental rules: EU-departing flights must make use of greener – but pricier – sustainable aviation fuel, while most intra-Europe flying incurs emissions charges. Westbound routes, by contrast, are much harder to interlope – and bring wealthy Americans to Europe to boot. Barclays analysts have estimated the continent’s major flag carriers earn well over half of their operating profit on North Atlantic services.

Aircraft are mobile assets – a fact Ryanair RYA.I never tires of leveraging to call out places it sees as taxing aviation too heavily. That means sustained uplift in demand for direct flights between Europe and Asia would eventually be at least partly met – Lufthansa has said it’s adding capacity into destinations like Singapore and Bangkok. But there’s still the inconvenience of airspace restrictions and subsequent extra costs: Russia is still closed, while airlines will be hoping for no further attacks on Azerbaijan, whose airspace has become increasingly critical but was partly closed last week after drone strikes it blamed on Iran.

The Gulf’s mega-hubs are in many ways at the heart of global aviation – on Friday Spohr described them as its “Achilles’ heel”. The turmoil leaves major European airlines more exposed to second-order effects, like the minority of this year’s fuel costs that are unhedged. But travellers’ itineraries will remain up in the air.

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CONTEXT NEWS

Flight tracking service Flightradar24 on March 9 reported increased activity among “most UAE airlines” on March 8 compared to the previous day, but noted that Etihad and Qatar Airways had operated fewer flights relative to March 7.

“Some airspace in the Middle East is reopening, but missile and drone attacks in major cities … are leading to fresh intermittent closures,” Flightradar24 said.

European airline group Deutsche Lufthansa reported its full-year 2025 results on March 6. Adjusted EBIT rose 19% to 2 billion euros, helped by continued strong flying demand and lower fuel costs.

Though the company said it expected adjusted EBIT to “significantly increase” in 2026, Chief Financial Officer Till Streichert warned that “challenges and uncertainties remain for our company and the entire industry, these days primarily driven by the situation in the Middle East. The crisis there makes it more difficult to provide an earnings forecast at present.”

(Editing by Aimee Donnellan; Production by Shrabani Chakraborty)

((For previous columns by the author, Reuters customers can click on TASLIC/oliver.taslic@thomsonreuters.com))