Gulf airports risk opening before airlines have the passengers and jets to fill them

The Gulf can pour the concrete for its new airports, but filling them depends on transfer traffic and jets that are both in short supply. The war has disrupted the first, and Boeing is slow to deliver the second. “There is a real possibility that airports expand faster than the fleet is added,” MENA geopolitical risk consultant Amandeep Kaur Ahuja tells EnterpriseAM. She still expects the traffic to arrive, just later than the region planned.

The region’s biggest hubs have spent much of the year running below capacity. Airlines canceled 26.5k flights at Dubai International (DXB), Doha’s Hamad International, and Riyadh’s King Khalid between February and late October, five times as many as a year earlier, according to Cirium data cited by Bloomberg. Riyadh had the roughest stretch: About 94% of King Khalid’s c. 4.4k scheduled departures were canceled between 10 and 27 October, after deadly missile attacks.

The Gulf’s own airlines have kept most of their seats in the system: GCC seat capacity for November is down 11% y-o-y, mainly because foreign airlines have cut back, aviation consultant Garth Lund tells us. Emirates plans to reduce capacity by 6% and Qatar Airways by 5%, while Etihad is adding 7%. Travelers are still happy to connect through the Gulf at a good fare, which has let regional carriers keep much of their network, Lund says.

The next link in the chain is Boeing’s production line: Boeing now expects to miss its target of 500 737 deliveries in 2026 and to hand over around 90 787 Dreamliners, the low end of its guidance, Asharq Business reports. It is still short of engines and working to steady 737 MAX output at 47 a month. First deliveries of the long-delayed 777X remain scheduled for 2027.

Who pays for the wait

The state is likely to carry more of the financing risk: Because governments fund these projects, they can shift money and schedules without scrapping the plans, Ahuja says. Private investors may ask for higher returns or commit capital in stages, which she sees as “likely to be a short-term impact of the war rather than a long-term feature.” She also expects state spending on security and backup systems to rise alongside infrastructure spending.

The capacity they’re paying for is well ahead of today’s traffic. The first phase of Dubai’s USD 35 bn Al Maktoum International Airport expansion (DWC), due in 2032, will have room for 150 mn passengers a year, more than twice the c. 63 mn DXB is on pace for this year, by our math. Saudi Arabia is targeting 330 mn annual passengers and more than 250 destinations by 2030, with Riyadh’s King Salman International Airport set to handle up to 100 mn passengers a year by then.

Traffic is coming back one airline at a time: DXB handled 31.5 mn passengers in 1H 2026, down 31.3% y-o-y, though monthly numbers rose from 3.5 mn in April to 5 mn in June. By May, 51 of the 90 airlines that used to serve the airport had returned, with war-risk ins. and government travel advisories keeping many Western carriers away the longest.

Returns on terminals and airport real estate depend on passenger volumes: Retail, food and beverage, parking, and property make up 43.5% of airport income across Asia-Pacific and the Middle East, against 36.7% globally, according to Airports Council International. Fewer passengers means slower returns on terminals, shops, and the real estate around them. Airport operators’ airline customers are under pressure too: IATA’s June outlook has Middle Eastern carriers going from USD 7.2 bn in combined net income in 2025 to a USD 4.3 bn net loss this year.

Operators may need incentives to fill new capacity: Incentives would cost airports revenue in the near term, but they can pay off if they build lasting demand on carefully chosen routes, Ahuja says.

Not all of that capacity depends on transfers: Dubai’s transfer and point-to-point traffic are broadly balanced, thanks to its large business and tourism market. Saudi Arabia’s aviation regulator has said only around 10% of its 330 mn target would be transit passengers, so losing connecting traffic would dent the Kingdom’s plans only so much.

Stress-testing the hub

Having several hubs in one region offers less backup than it seems. Nearby airports can absorb only so much when they share the same airspace and security risks, Sindy Foster, principal managing partner at Avaero Capital Partners, tells us. Saudi Arabia is a case in point. Its airports handled more than 120 flights for other carriers between 28 February and 16 March, but after the October attacks, Riyadh Air moved limited operations to Al Qassim Airport, around 400 km from the capital, and international carriers suspended services.

Physical damage could be a bigger long-term threat: Damaged runways, terminals, or aircraft could take years to repair or replace, aviation analyst Hans Elnaes tells us. Dubai is already considering additional protection for Al Maktoum International, including underground fuel storage and reinforced infrastructure. DXB received 111 ballistic alerts during the conflict, and one of the 17 resulting strikes hit above-ground fuel tanks and briefly halted operations.

Connections are the product

Losing transfers costs a hub more than the passengers themselves, Foster says. With fewer passengers connecting, airlines cut frequencies, and the rest of the network becomes less attractive, she says. Gulf carriers time arrivals and departures in tight banks to link passengers across continents, so cutting a twice-daily service to once daily can wipe out a whole bank of connections.

The longer the disruption lasts, the more of that traffic rivals could keep. Rival airlines get time to add routes and sign corporate customers, and travelers who switch may stick around if the alternatives prove reliable. The stakes are large: Gulf hubs normally handle around 14% of global connecting traffic and roughly one-fifth of Europe-Asia journeys.

Can rivals take much of it? Competing carriers have little spare widebody capacity for Europe-Asia passengers, and longer routes and higher fuel bills make flying around the Gulf more expensive, he says. The region’s geography and the size of its airlines’ networks are hard to copy, Elnaes argues.

Waiting on the fleet

Flydubai and Riyadh Air are most exposed to the bottleneck at Boeing, Foster argues. Flydubai depends on the slower 737 Max ramp-up, and Riyadh Air’s reliance on the 787 could hold back its early international expansion, she says. With fewer planes and routes to spread disruption across, a newer airline feels even a small delay more.

Emirates and Saudia have more room to adjust. Emirates faces its own 777X delays, but its existing fleet and Airbus A350 deliveries give it flexibility, and Saudia’s mixed fleet leaves it better placed to adapt, Wouter Dewulf, professor of air transport management and economics at the University of Antwerp, tells us.

For Dewulf, the bigger cost is the routes that never launch: Carriers keep paying for recruitment, training, and commercial preparation while new routes wait. “The biggest financial risk is not necessarily the additional cost of leasing an aircraft. It is the revenue an airline never earns because it cannot launch a profitable route, or because a competitor captures that market first,” he says.

The stopgaps are getting pricier too: Carriers can extend leases, keep older jets flying, buy used aircraft, or wet-lease capacity. Older jets cost more to fly as fuel prices rise and spend more time in maintenance, and switching to Airbus won’t help much, since it has supply-chain problems of its own.

Hotels and air cargo may feel it too: Tourism projects, hotels, and cargo facilities that rely on international routes could take longer to fill if airlines grow more slowly, he says. Widebody passenger jets also carry a lot of belly-hold freight, so fewer jets means less cargo capacity.

What’s next: Ahuja expects governments to phase investment and the opening of new facilities around aircraft deliveries. The next thing to track are Boeing’s first 777X deliveries in 2027, Saudi Arabia’s 2030 passenger target, and DWC’s first phase in 2032.