AGBI
John Grant
12 Mar 2026
Events may have shaken the industry but airlines are experts in schedule recovery
The last 12 days have been some of the most challenging faced by Middle East aviation, characterised by severe disruption to schedules, passengers believing they’ve been left stranded by their airlines and aircraft displaced all over the world waiting for a safe moment to return.
The scale of disruption cannot be underestimated, however. About 38,700 flights were scheduled to depart from the Middle East between February 28 and March 10, with over 8.1 million seats originally planned to leave the region.
As we know, a very small proportion of those flights departed and those that did operated off normal schedules. Windows of opportunity meant airlines operated “off schedule” with a focus on repatriating passengers rather than the normal connecting traffic that drives so much of the volumes passing through local airports...
Aviation is ready to fly again… and very quickly | AGBI | 12 Mar 2026
