Squeezed skies: How avoiding war zones is driving up the cost of your flight

When Melbourne traveller Mike Stow flew back from the UK via Abu Dhabi in July, despite tensions continuing to flare up in the Middle East, his flights were full.

While some people were avoiding the region because of war, the frequent flyer remained unconcerned. “Over the years, there have been many of these stoushes … it never makes a long-term impact on travel,” Stow says.

Yet, Stow admits that, for nervous passengers, the fear of travelling via areas close to a conflict zone isn’t unwarranted. “Some people are more risk-averse rather than risk-aware,” he says.

That divide is reshaping long-haul travel to Europe. Amid recent military conflicts in the Middle East, airlines have been forced to alter flight paths, rerouting tens of thousands of passengers.

The impact on Middle Eastern transit hubs has been dramatic. Data from analytics firm OAG reveals connecting bookings through Doha plunged 52 per cent following the Iran conflict, while Dubai dropped 44 per cent. In contrast, Asian hubs absorbed the overflow – with European transit traffic through Singapore rising 32 per cent and Hong Kong surging 48 per cent.

The escalating regional conflicts and security risks are fragmenting global airspace, forcing airlines into longer, costlier detours. They have redirected passenger traffic away from the Middle East to Asian hubs and driven up the technical complexity and cost of air travel.

Australian Travel Industry Association’s Dean Long says: “One of the things we’ve definitely found is that the cheapest fare will be putting you into different airspace at a different level of risk.

“It’s no longer just about the pitch of the seat. Different air corridors are going to cost different amounts of money [driven] by what is occurring around them.

“And so people need to be aware of that, particularly if they’re just booking on price,” he says.

The relatively easy-to-access open airspace of past decades is becoming a patchwork with different rules and variable conditions.

The avoidance of routes near Iran and the Persian Gulf means more Asia-Europe flights cross a narrow corridor over Azerbaijan, or fly south across Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Mediterranean.

Long says the air corridors to Europe have always been relatively narrow, but adds: “They are very narrow now.”

There really are now two directions – one through Africa, and one through Asia – for these trips.

“It is something people are definitely going to have to be aware of – and make sure they’re asking the right questions when they’re booking those carriers,” Long says.

Brisbane-based Tony and Marie Steele are an example of travellers who opted out of flying via the Middle East due to the conflict in the region. They had a trip to Athens booked for June via Virgin/Qatar, but as the days ticked down and uncertainty over the situation in the Middle East increased, they visited a travel agent to see what options were available. “We were not comfortable travelling through that region,” says Tony.

When Virgin/Qatar cancelled their flight in early April, allowing them to get a refund for the return trip, the couple immediately booked directly with Singapore Airlines. “We have friends that booked for 2027 going to Europe via Dubai. For us, though, we would rather have peace of mind and won’t transit through that region until it is pretty much certain that hostilities won’t reignite again.”

For that reason, they have booked for 2027 to Europe directly with Singapore Airlines.

Iran is only the latest conflict to unsettle global aviation.

Only four years ago, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine gave an advantage to Middle East and Chinese airlines. They could continue to fly over Russian airspace on more direct routes to Europe.

Western airlines, meanwhile, had to avoid Russian airspace and were forced to fly longer – sometimes for hours – to avoid it. Finnair, for example, once offered some of the quickest trips from Europe to Asia. After 2022, it had to fly a route four hours longer around Russia to connect to Asia afterwards. Finnair launches flights from Melbourne to Helsinki next month.

In a sign of how fluid airspace conditions have become, Middle Eastern and Chinese airlines are now being warned by Ukraine about the risks of continuing to fly over Russia.

In August, Ukraine – whose airspace has been closed by war since 2022 – warned the International Civil Aviation Organisation that Russian airspace should no longer be considered safe, as the ongoing drone assault between Russia and Ukraine continues.

The rapid changes in airspace require airlines to rethink their plans quickly, including recalculating fuel costs, flight times and staffing.

The highways of the sky

The upshot of all these changes is that more planes are being crammed into some of the highways that allow thousands of planes to travel across the planet.

Which routes airlines fly affects the system that the aviation sector has perfected over the years to fill the sky more efficiently with the 30,000 commercial aircraft in active service.

What is known as the semicircular rule (or hemispheric rule) is designed to make sure two planes flying in opposite directions never end up at the same altitude. The planes must maintain a “vertical separation” of 2000 feet, or just over 600 metres, keeping them safely apart.

Planes at cruising altitude can actually fly closer vertically to each other, a mere 1000 feet or about 300 metres below or above another plane. This is called the “Reduced Vertical Separation Minimum”. This increases airspace capacity while maximising traffic flows.

Every type of plane has a peak efficiency at specific altitudes – usually above 29,000 feet – where air density, temperature and drag require less fuel to burn.

The modern commercial jet is designed for maximum efficiency with minimal emissions (newer models can be up to 25 per cent more efficient than the previous generation). When planes can’t fly at the optimal level, they incur a “fuel burn penalty”.

Think of it like driving a car with underinflated tyres: more fuel is needed to achieve the same speed and distance.

Reduced Vertical Separation Minimum actually doubles the capacity of routes, which enhances traffic flow, improves on-time performance and cuts delays.

So while there are optimal altitudes for flight, what’s happening on the ground is increasingly complicating things.

Before 2022, there were dozens of daily Europe-to-Asia flights crossing Russian airspace. After the conflict began, many of those airlines had to reroute via Turkey, the South Caucasus and Central Asia. That adds two to four hours to flight time and up to 12 tonnes of additional fuel burn per leg of the trip, changing the economics of these flights.

Ivona Siniarska, managing director of Melbourne-based travel agency Take Off Go, says that worries about route safety are increasingly balanced against considerations around pricing holiday airfares. “Some of the options avoiding the region have become incredibly expensive and in some cases cost-prohibitive,” she says.

For that reason, some Australians, wanting to avoid the Middle East, have turned to China-based airlines as an option for travel to Europe.

The Association of Asia Pacific Airlines director general Wong Hong says he has seen airlines and hubs in the Asia-Pacific pivot to capture traffic from routes crossing the Gulf. “But how much of that traffic has permanently shifted is an interesting question.”

Hubs such as Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur were already busy serving existing demand, Hong says, so they didn’t have unlimited excess capacity to offer.

“Who exactly will be the winners? Is it some of the Chinese carriers? Some of the Asian carriers? Or even the Europeans? I think this will still play itself out,” Hong says.

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