What happens next with airfares and flights
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As a nation of travellers, the Iran war has created huge uncertainty over whether we can still go ahead with our holidays, whether the airlines are likely to cancel our flights and how much more flying is going to cost us. Today, aviation expert Ian Douglas on where things currently stand and what to expect if the war doesn't end soon. I'm Sam Hawley on Gadigal land in Sydney. This is ABC News Daily.
Ian, we spoke about a month ago and, well, we didn't know then how long this war would last. But even then, the Gulf Airlines were experiencing severe flight disruptions.
Dubai's International Airport, which is the world's largest for international travel, has suspended all flights until further notice. Emirates and FlyDubai have temporarily halted operations. Qatar Airways has suspended all flights from Doha. British Airways has cancelled flights to Tel Aviv, Bahrain and Amman.
So tell me now, what are we seeing in terms of those flights?
Those flights are coming back a little bit. They're not back to the full schedule they were flying before, but the Gulf carriers are again flying into their hub airports in Doha and Dubai and Abu Dhabi and connecting passengers through. I've been tracking some of them not just out of Australia but out of Asia as well, and some of the pricing has been quite aggressive to get customers back again.
So I guess what people want to know as well is looking ahead, would it be okay now to book with these airlines, these golf carriers, or is it better just at the moment to avoid them?
I think it's reasonable to book on them. In fact, my partner has booked a flight to Europe by the golf carriers. So this household has already said, yes, we think it's reliable enough to go ahead.
I mean, just explain for me how these Gulf Airlines have managed to keep things pretty stable, given the uncertainty in the region and this war still underway.
They don't have an option. They had to find a solution. They're major businesses. There is a massive investment in aircraft, massive investment in relationships as well. So it wasn't an option. It was find the solution, get the aircraft back in the air, get people moving to where they need to be and rebuild the reputations and start now.
But that solution, you're talking about that's safe for passengers, right?
Yeah. Nobody will operate a commercial passenger aircraft unsafely. It's just the nature of the industry is that you are way safer on a plane than in a taxi going to the airport.
We are a nation of travellers, of course, and around the middle of the year, June, July, many of us do like to pop on a plane and head to Europe or elsewhere. Why don't we just consider that a bit more, what it all means for availability, for price, for getting where you want to go. Now, we know the cost of jet fuel has really soared, hasn't it? So that's having a big impact at the moment.
Yeah, particularly it's gone up even more in Asia than it has in other parts of the world. So the price of jet fuel has more than doubled in some places. The problem with that, well, several problems with that. One is that fuel makes up such a major part of the total cost of operating an aircraft. And when you double the fuel cost, that cost comes immediately.
What disruptions are airlines facing due to the war in Iran?
even though you may have sold tickets to somebody weeks or even months ago when the cost of operation was much lower. So the airlines are at this point still carrying people who bought tickets earlier and at the same time are already paying out much higher fuel prices and it will have made some operations that were previously profitable marginal, some that were previously marginal unprofitable and that will start to reflect in schedules and what's available to buy.
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