By Datuk Ts Dr. Hj Ramli Amir, former President of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILT) Malaysia and Vice-President of CILT International for Southeast Asia
KOTA KINABALU: The current Middle East crisis has turned airline scheduling from a complex optimisation problem into a livefire stress test of everything we discussed: hub banks, connection windows, fleet and crew chains, and dayofoperation recovery.
Broken corridors in a banked world
For decades, airlines built tightly timed Europe–Asia and Europe–Africa webs using Middle Eastern hubs and overflight corridors as the “short bridge” between continents.
Airspace closures over parts of Israel, Iran, and Iraq, and in surrounding FIRs, have abruptly removed or narrowed these corridors, forcing flights onto longer northern routes via Türkiye and the Caucasus, or southern tracks via Egypt, the Red Sea, and Saudi Arabia.
This instantly stretches the carefully calibrated banks: a flight that used to arrive at a hub at 06:50 to catch a 07:30 wave now arrives at 08:30 or later, missing many downstream connections. To keep the bank concept alive at all, airlines have had to reschedule many flights, reduce others, and, in extreme cases, cancel entire flights when the new timings no longer support viable connections. https://kashmirobserver.net/2025/06/23/skylock-iran-israel-war-grounds-flights-reroutes-the-world/
Capacity cuts and the unravelling of connectivity
Within the region itself, scheduled capacity has fallen sharply as carriers cut or suspend services due to safety concerns and operational uncertainties. One analysis found that about one-third of planned Middle East seats were removed within weeks, with major Gulf carriers reducing capacity by 40–60 per cent and dozens of foreign airlines cancelling operations in the region for months. https://www.brookfieldav.com/single-post/how-the-aviation-industry-is-navigating-the-middle-eastern-conflict
Every cancelled flight is not just a lost point-to-point leg; it also removes spokes from multiple hub banks and cuts off onward connections to Africa, South Asia, and Europe. Demand that once flowed through Dubai, Doha, or Abu Dhabi is now being diverted to Asian and European hubs, which are facing increasing transfer loads on already-constrained schedules.
Fuel, longer stage lengths, and fragile rotations
Rerouting around conflict zones typically adds one to three hours to many Asia–Europe routes, increasing fuel use and sometimes requiring technical stops or limits on payload. When a flight that formerly took 11 hours now takes 13 or 14 hours, the entire daily rotation of the aircraft—and the crew’s duty schedule—must be adjusted, often reducing the number of legs that the aircraft and crew can operate within 24 hours.
At the same time, disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz and broader conflicts have increased global jet fuel prices by over 20 per cent, with regulators and analysts warning that ongoing spikes could significantly raise airline costs worldwide. Airlines that had optimised schedules around high utilisation now face a paradox: longer routing times and higher fuel costs, yet fewer block hours per day per aircraft as knock-on duty time and airport curfew restrictions take effect.
Networkwide ripple effects: from hubs to spokes
Outside the Middle East, regulators such as the Australian ACCC are already noticing how decreased long-haul supply from Gulf carriers is pushing passengers towards Asian hubs, tightening capacity and increasing fares on Asia–Europe routes. Forward schedules filed in OAG and other systems indicate that these cuts and shifts are not just short-term responses but are influencing the entire season’s banking structures and fleet plans. https://dimerco.com/news-press/middle-east-airspace-disruptions-impact-asia-europe-capacity/
For an airline scheduler, this involves re-solving a multi-layered puzzle under new constraints: differing overflight times, new curfew interactions, changed hub wave patterns, and altered competitive dynamics on trunk routes. Carriers are reallocating aircraft to alternative markets (for example, increasing capacity to Asia and Africa from Europe) and even storing surplus wide-bodies when certain high-risk routes cannot be operated profitably or safely, fundamentally altering the network geometry on which the schedule depends.
Irregular operations as the new normal
What was once occasional “irregular operations” has now become a persistent problem on many routes near or around the Middle East. Missiles, drone activity, or sudden regulatory directives can close airspace with little warning, leading to mass diversions, longer routes, and same-day cancellations that disrupt the original hub structure.
Operations control centres, already coordinating aircraft, crew, and maintenance in real time, now must incorporate live geopolitical risk and constantly changing NOTAMs into their decisions about whether to hold a bank for late-running feeds, reroute a flight, or cancel. In this environment, the art of airline scheduling is no longer just about optimising a future timetable, but about maintaining a fragile, shifting web of connections that ensures global mobility can persist through and around one of the world’s most vital transit regions. https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/topics/economy/iran-middle-east-conflict-impacts-global-economy.html
