At peak disruption in March, close to 80% of Asia-Europe services routing through the Gulf were stripped from the map, creating a void “larger than the rest of the system can absorb in the short term,” Sindy Foster, principal managing partner of aviation and aerospace advisory firm Avaero Capital Partners, tells EnterpriseAM.

Now, with capacity tight and a fragile ceasefire holding, every airline plying the corridor is circling the highest-yield slice of the global market: The first- and business-class passengers Gulf majors briefly lost. The contest is not for volume but for value — and the airlines best positioned to convert temporary spillover into permanent share will define the next decade of airline competition. In the first part of thisseries, we examined the USD multi-bn efficiency shock hitting the Gulf's hub-and-spoke model. Today, we look at who stands to gain — and where the next frontier lies.

“The current shift in premium Asia-Europe traffic is partly disruption-driven, but it should not be dismissed as purely temporary. Gulf hubs still have deep structural advantages: Scale, geography, premium product, connectivity, and strong transfer economics,” Foster says. “However, repeated airspace disruption, fuel volatility, and passenger sensitivity to connection risk are making some corporate and high-yield travelers reconsider routings that previously felt automatic.”

The lay of the land: Regional air travel has begun recovering since a fragile ceasefire took hold in early April, but the recovery is far from complete. GCC-based carriers are steadily restoring schedules and frequencies but remain below pre-war norms, as we previously reported. Several global players — including Cathay Pacific, KLM, Air France, and Air Canada — have not yet resumed operations, opting to hedge against renewed hostilities. Iran’s attacks on the UAE this week underscored why.

The premium displacement Foster describes is real, but bounded. “Airlines such as Turkish Airlines, Lufthansa Group, and Singapore Airlines are seeing incremental gains, but the scale is limited relative to the capacity removed,” she says. “The system simply cannot absorb the volume displaced from Gulf hubs in the short term — most of what we are seeing is spillover rather than replacement.”

Don’t expect Gulf carriers to give up their most valuable passengers without a fight: The shift is likely “temporary,” with Gulf majors set to “do all in their power, pricing and marketing to recover that traffic,” John Grant, partner at Midas Aviation, tells EnterpriseAM.

Group A: European players

Not all winners are equal: Some airlines are absorbing displaced traffic as a tactical fix, while others are positioning to convert spillover into durable gains. Distinguishing between the two is key to understanding how the competitive landscape is shifting.

Turkish Airlines is “already a serious player,” Grant says, pointing to how it is “creating one of the largest hubs in the world with a domestic network that supports all of the international development.” Its model shares some structural advantages of the Gulf's hub-and-spoke playbook, but it sits north of the conflict zone and runs over 1.3k daily flights without the same airspace risk.

The March numbers reflect the upside: Turkish Airlines moved 700k more passengers than in February, and landings rose 9% m-o-m to 44.7k by our math. Its passenger load factor — aviation industry-speak for how efficiently an airline fills its planes — climbed from 82.7% to 83.6%. Budget arm Pegasus Airlines mirrored the pattern.

Whether the gains stick is another question. “Turkish Airlines’ recent gains reflect both structural advantage and timing. Its Istanbul hub is a powerful bridge between Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East … But some of the current upside is also disruption-led. The key question is whether Turkish converts temporary traffic gains into loyalty, corporate contracts, and repeat premium demand,” Foster says.

Lufthansa, by contrast, “has no possibility of making a serious push,” Grant tells us. It can capture some European premium and corporate traffic, but its cost base and operational complexity weigh it down. Early in the war, the carrier picked up initial spillover, only to be hit by what CEO Carsten Spohr called a EUR 1.5 bn cost explosion from unhedged fuel exposure and the brutal efficiency loss of long-haul detours — leading to flight reductions and the grounding of 27 aircraft. The constraints are structural, with the airline facing “numerous challenges from labor costs to fleet deliveries and network structure,” Grant says.

That gap explains why Gulf majors remain confident. Emirates President Tim Clark dismissed the threat from European and US legacy carriers chasing Asia traffic: “They have no aircraft to be able to do, or even come anywhere near the production capability of 270 widebody aircraft in Emirates alone.”

Higher jet fuel prices are reshaping capacity decisions across the industry — pushing airlines toward tighter network discipline, high-yield routes, and fuel-efficient fleets, according to a note by Cirium’s Ascend Consultancy. The shift away from growth for growth’s sake reinforces where the action is: The small slice of the market that drives the highest returns.

The stress test isn't over. “High jet fuel prices over time are historically a major reason for airline bankruptcies. Fortunately, most airlines today are more financially robust than before the pandemic,” aviation analyst Hans Jørgen Elnaes tells EnterpriseAM.

Group B: Asian carriers’ quiet play

Singapore is also making a run, targeting premium spillover without materially changing the structure of the market, with Singapore Airlines adding extra flights to London for the summer to pick up traffic that might have otherwise connected through the Gulf. “Singapore Airlines and the Indian carriers remain strong,” Grant says, with “future market growth… expected to be very strong” in India.

Looking more broadly across the competitive field: “Among Lufthansa, Turkish Airlines, Singapore Airlines, and Indian carriers, I would see Singapore Airlines as strongest on product, premium yield discipline, and balance-sheet resilience; Lufthansa as relatively protected in the short term by hedging and corporate demand; Turkish as strategically well-placed, but more exposed to regional geography; and Indian carriers as the long-term challengers rather than the immediate winners,” she notes.

The case for the Indian carriers: For years, roughly 40% of India’s international traffic flowed through Middle Eastern hubs. Now, Air India and IndiGo are using the disruption to accelerate a direct-to-destination model. By proving they can move passengers from Mumbai or Delhi to Europe safely — without a Gulf layover — they are breaking the hub habit. Air India has already launched 78 additional flights to Europe and the US last month to capture redirected demand.

The opportunity is credible over the long term but will be gradual, Foster cautions. Direct routing reduces connection risk and journey time, which appeals to premium travelers — but “carriers can retain some point-to-point demand, particularly on Europe-India flows, but they do not yet have the scale or connectivity to replicate the Gulf model.”

Ultimately, it will filter down to premium quality: It will “depend on the quality of that product,” Grant says — and for now, that still “has some way to go to match the Gulf carriers,” leaving its credibility uncertain, and positioning Singaporean carriers for capturing the tailwind in the medium-term.

What’s next

The next frontier is unambiguous: First- and business-class traffic, the segment that drives airline profitability. Winners will combine reliability, fuel resilience, premium product, and credible direct or semi-direct alternatives. “High fuel prices usually favor airlines with newer fleets, strong hedging, pricing power, and the ability to pass costs through to premium passengers. They also punish inefficient routings and older aircraft,” Foster says.

For Gulf carriers, the right response is doubling down on that core segment — and Emirates is already on it. “[We’re] working on en-suite bathrooms in first-class suites… I want everyone to hear that so everyone rushes out the door to find out how they can get bathrooms in first-class suites,” Clark said at the 2026 Capa Airline Leader Summit in Berlin in April.

For Indian, Singaporean, and Turkish carriers, the play is to circle that same high-yield demand. The Asia-West gap the GCC left at peak disruption is too large to fill in full, but premium represents just under 10% of seat volume across the top 50 airlines — small enough to chip away at without radical capacity repurposing or major fleet expansion. And no competitor can meaningfully expand its fleet overnight — as Clark points out — nor in a year or three, even with the cash to buy or lease more aircraft. That’s the aviation industry’s decade-long supply chain for you…