Delayed engines are forcing Gulf airlines to rework routes and pay more to maintain older fleets

Gulf’s airlines have hundreds of new jets on order, and a shortage of engines is slowing how fast they can arrive. Engine manufacturers have stepped up production, but demand is still running ahead of them, and Boeing customers are feeling it most. Until the new jets arrive, the region’s carriers are paying to keep older aircraft flying longer.

Why it matters: A late jet means a late route. When deliveries slip, airlines have to delay launches, cut frequencies, or lease in capacity to cover the gap. Every extra year an older jet stays in service also sends more work to engine shops that are already stretched.

What sits under the wing decides who waits

On narrowbodies, nearly every Gulf order runs through engine manufacturer CFM. The LEAP-1B is the only engine available for the 737 Max. Air Arabia ordered 240 LEAP-1As for its 120 A320neo-family jets, Riyadh Air picked 120 LEAP-1As for 60 A321neos, and flydubai has a services agreement covering 222 LEAP-1Bs on 111 Max aircraft.

In terms of numbers, CFM’s are moving in the right direction: LEAP deliveries rose 41% in 1H 2026, and CFM has shipped more than 500 engines in each of the past four quarters. It still has to ramp fast enough to keep up with Airbus and especially Boeing, Wouter Dewulf, professor of air transport management and economics at the University of Antwerp, tells EnterpriseAM. The link is tightest on Max, he adds, because there’s no second engine to fall back on.

Widebody buyers carry their own exposure through the 787: Boeing says engine shortages are slowing its planned increase in Dreamliner production. That puts carriers with large 787 orders potentially exposed, among them Riyadh Air, Saudia, Etihad, and Qatar Airways, Sindy Foster, principal managing partner at Avaero Capital Partners, tells EnterpriseAM. Boeing hasn't publicly tied any specific delivery to those airlines to an engine delay, she adds.

Meanwhile, Pratt & Whitney's squeeze comes from the jets it has already delivered: Alongside new geared turbofan (GTF) engines for Airbus and Embraer, it has to support a heavy aftermarket of shop visits, spare engines, and power-metal inspections. So some of the engines and parts it builds go to keeping current aircraft flying instead of onto new ones, Dewulf says.

More engines would help, though the Gulf also needs engines that hold up. Higher CFM output and a lighter GTF maintenance load would help Gulf carriers as much as anyone. Heat and harsh operating conditions put extra strain on engines in the region, making durability, time on wing and maintenance support as important as delivery numbers, Bryan Terry, managing director at Alton Aviation Consultancy, tells EnterpriseAM.

Engines also share the blame with other bottlenecks: Boeing is struggling to hold 737 Max production steady at 47 a month, largely because of wing production, and premium-seat certification is holding back the 787 alongside engines. The bigger problem is how these constrained supply chains now feed into one another, with none of them dominating, Dewulf says.

Delays hit the route map first, then the repair bill

Two Gulf carriers have already had to adjust. Flydubai has said repeated Boeing delays forced it to revisit routes and frequencies, and it has wet-leased aircraft to fill the gap. Riyadh Air's first Dreamliner delay pushed back its launch. When six aircraft then arrived within c. 30 days, the airline had to fit its planned fleet build-up into a much shorter window, Foster says. Etihad has had a smoother run, with strong delivery growth recently and no current engine-related delay, she adds.

Airlines have a standard playbook for this: They push back launches, new routes, or added frequencies, move aircraft over from other routes, fly existing jets longer, or pick up used aircraft from lessors and other airlines, Terry says. Delivery delays have become routine for the industry in recent years, he adds.

The playbook gets harder to run the longer a delay lasts: Six months is usually manageable. A year-long slip across many aircraft can force a broader rethink, because the airline may have hired pilots, secured slots, and marketed routes around jets that haven’t shown up.

Keeping older jets flying also means more time in the shop: Longer service lives bring more engine shop visits at repair facilities that are already short on capacity. Abu Dhabi's Sanad is expanding to take on more of that work: its expanded Rolls-Royce agreement in February covers up to 612 Trent 700 shop visits through 2031, backed by AED 125 mn of planned spending on equipment, systems, automation, and hiring.

Money buys the flagships time, but only so much

Emirates and Etihad are spending heavily to stretch the life of the jets they already have. Emirates is spending nearly USD 5 bn retrofitting its A380 and 777 fleets, as delayed deliveries force it to keep them in service longer. President Tim Clark has described the strategy as the airline taking control of its own destiny. Etihad is buying aircraft on the secondary market, bringing A380s back into service, stockpiling parts locally, and running a USD 1 bn retrofit program.

That kind of spending comes easier with a big balance sheet behind it. Carriers in the UAE, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia have bigger fleets, more purchasing power, and stronger sovereign backing. That leaves them less exposed to supply-chain shocks than smaller states and low-cost carriers in the region, Terry argues.

Scale has a downside, though, since bigger orderbooks leave bigger gaps when deliveries slip. Large Gulf carriers generally have better access to financing, lessors, and wet-lease Aircraft, Crew, Maintenance, and Ins. (ACMI) capacity, and the scale of their orders gives them bargaining power with manufacturers. “But money cannot create an engine or a delivery slot when the entire industry is short of capacity,” Dewulf says. An airline expecting dozens of aircraft a year has a much harder time absorbing repeated delays than one missing a single jet from a small orderbook, he adds.

Airlines are starting to buy engine support along with the jet

All of this is changing what airlines ask for when they place orders. Engine availability, spare-engine commitments, maintenance capacity, and overhaul turnaround now sit alongside fuel burn and price when airlines weigh a purchase, Foster argues.

Some carriers are also spreading the risk across both airframers. Flydubai and Etihad have each ordered from Airbus and Boeing, though neither has said that engine shortages alone drove that choice. On the A320neo family, which has two engine options, “the supplier's ability to support both deliveries and the in-service fleet could influence future selections,” Foster says.