The Middle East has experienced an unparalleled era of growth, with airlines and airports consistently introducing innovative products and services to cater to the demands of a swiftly expanding market.

In recent years, the Middle East has established a leading position in developing new markets and connecting the region to the rest of the world with non-stop services to all continents and key cities. The region has a highly competitive environment with best-in-class airlines operating in all segments, alongside ambitious plans for new aircraft and routes. This makes the Middle East a real hot-spot in the aviation industry. 

Setting the Scene of Today's Aviation Landscape

The Middle East is the sixth largest region in the world based on available capacity, with 270 million one-way seats in 2024 placing the region ahead of Eastern Europe and behind South Asia

• The sixth-place position may appear lower than the wider public perception, but two important factors need to be remembered when discussing the Middle East:
  • There are very few domestic markets within the region, and whilst they are crucial for connectivity in some of the larger Middle East markets they account for just 20% of all capacity
    • The major domestic markets are in Saudi Arabia and Iran which account for 94% of all domestic seats - the Saudi Arabian domestic market is three times larger than Iran’s domestic market, despite the larger population in Iran
  • Despite the broader market maturity, there are still some countries where market growth has been modest in recent years such as Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan – these countries have not seen the levels of growth associated with some of the larger, high-profile markets in the region
• Compared its five larger peers, the Middle East has experienced the second strongest recovery in global airline capacity (domestic and international) since 2019, with only South-East Asia (and essentially India) recording higher growth
• Each region in the world has been following its own recovery trajectory post-pandemic - in 2024, South-East Asia was still in recovery and while 13.3% below 2019 levels it is now in a stronger phase of growth - which is important given the region’s connectivity and demand to and from the Middle East

A more in-depth analysis of the pandemic travel recovery focusing solely on international capacity reveals an even more optimistic outlook for the Middle East market, with a near 9% rate of growth representing 218 million seats.

In comparison to the five larger regional markets, on international capacity the Middle East has reported the second strongest recovery with two regional markets, North-East and South-East Asia still below pre-pandemic levels at the end of 2024.

Middle East Airlines: Big AMbitions, Fierce Competition

As of 2024, two Middle Eastern Carriers have gained prominence worldwide; Emirates and Qatar Airways are the only two Middle Eastern airlines to feature in 2024’s Top 20 Global Airlines for Capacity and the Top 10 Global Airlines by ASKs.

Emirates is now the 14th largest carrier globally by seat capacity and ranks 4th in terms of available seat kilometers (ASKs).  In ASK terms, it trails only the three major US mainline airlines.    

Qatar Airways has experienced dramatic growth in the last decade, as it developed Doha as a global connecting point and moved from 36th largest airline globally 10 years ago to 19th in 2024.  In terms of ASKs, Qatar Airways has advanced from 17th to 6th largest globally in 2024.  

The airline’s growth strategy is evident when looking at the Top 10 carriers in the Middle East.  In 2024, Qatar Airways’ capacity increased by 18% compared to 2019, while both Emirates and Saudia remained behind 2019 levels by 7% and 10%, respectively. 

Amongst the 10 largest carriers in the region, flynas - the Saudi based, privately owned carrier - is the fastest growing, increasing capacity by 63% in 2024 (compared to 2019 levels). This growth rate exceeded flydubai who also recorded strong growth of 56% in 2024.  Both flynas and flydubai operated similar volumes of capacity in 2024, at around 14.4m departing seats – although flynas is just ahead by 25,000 seats. 

flydubai and flynas’ networks are similar, however flynas benefits from a large domestic market within Saudi Arabia, allowing them to operate a more diverse route network. 

flynas 2024 network

flydubai 2024 network

Looking to the legacy carriers, it’s clear that both Emirates and Qatar Airways are playing in similar spaces with very similar route networks. 

Emirates 2024 network

Qatar Airways 2024 network

It’s clear from looking at Emirates and flydubai that there are clear synergies between their short-haul and long-haul networks and this is only likely to continue as competition rises in the region.   The combined position in capacity terms of both Emirates and flydubai cements the Emirates Group as the largest, with over 50 million departing seats in 2024, and 23% of the market for Middle East domiciled carriers.

• Takeoff: Vital statistics for the world's 20 major airlines
• Airline frequency and capacity statistics: Global data updated monthly

Connecting Global Hubs: The Strategic Role of Middle East Aviation Hubs

Alongside the ever-growing local market demand, the key feature of the Middle East and particularly the bigger markets of the UAE, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, is the depth of network that they offer to travelers. 

Non-stop flights from the region’s major hub airports reach every continent, with only a handful of international markets remaining unserved directly. 

Doha to Auckland is currently the longest non-stop route operated from the Middle East by Qatar Airways, which at 7,843 Nautical Miles is slightly longer than Emirates’ Dubai to Auckland route at 7,664 Nautical Miles. 

Currently, key South American markets such as Lima and Santiago fall just outside the operational reach from the Middle East.  In time, with ever increasing aircraft ranges, it is likely these destinations will provide new markets for the network carriers to increase their revenues further. 

For many airlines around the world, connecting traffic has been the cornerstone of network growth, using 6th freedom traffic flows to support local demand and allow the introduction of new routes. The proposition being that as economic activity develops, populations grow, and trade advances, the local proportions of traffic will increase, potentially reducing reliance on the lower yielding transfer traffic that supported the route’s launch in the first place. 

The analysis below shows the percentage of connecting traffic carried by the region’s major airlines at key intervals since 2015 and highlights each carrier’s dependency on connecting passengers.

The inclusion of flydubai alongside Emirates reflects the degree to which the two airlines are increasingly coordinating schedules, transfer traffic and operational facilities to cross feed revenue within the broader Emirates Group, despite their differences in operating models. 

For what has traditionally been regarded as the “Big Three” -  Emirates, Qatar Airways and Etihad – most of their passengers are connecting through their respective hub facilities with a range of between 84% for Qatar Airways to 66% for Emirates. While slight adjustments in their proportional connecting shares have occurred over the years, the ongoing network growth and increased connectivity almost inevitably leads to continued high connecting shares. Interestingly, the hybrid model of flydubai does show their increasing proportion of connecting traffic from 2015 to 2024 as the airline has in recent years been taking greater steps to align its network to that of Emirates. 

Looking ahead and recognizing the ongoing developments in Saudi Arabia, Saudia - the current national airline and base carrier - has less than half of its traffic connecting through the Riyadh hub on international-to-international routings. Historic connectivity numbers at Riyadh reflect previous visa requirements which have been eased in recent years. However, reaching the levels of connecting traffic seen at other major Middle Eastern hubs will be a significant challenge in the years ahead.

Charting Growth: Middle East LCCs Double Market Share in a Decade

In 2024, LCCs accounted for 29% of capacity in the Middle East, having more than doubled in the last decade from just 13% of capacity in 2014. By comparison, globally, LCCs operated 34% of capacity in 2024.   

Tapping into a growing desire to fly within the region, LCC capacity has grown at a much faster rate than mainline capacity, increasing by an average of 11.5% year on year in the last decade, compared to a mainline growth rate of just 1.4% each year over the same time period.  

The Middle East LCC market in 2024 has eight main players set out in the chart below. flydubai and flynas are largest, both with almost a quarter of LCC capacity each in the region. 

As expected, the majority of each of the main LCC’s capacity is focused on operating within the Middle East region, but as each carrier has evolved, so too have their networks and Africa represents an important market:
•    This is driven, to some extent, by the Saudi Arabia – Egypt market which accounts for a significant share – for Flyadeal, 96% of their African capacity operates to Egypt, and for flynas, 81%
•    This is an important market for Air Arabia too, with 73% of their Middle East – Africa capacity operating into Egypt 
Both flydubai and Air Arabia have a larger share of capacity operating into Asia, predominantly operating to the Indian subcontinent which serves the sizeable blue collar worker market that exists between the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East.   Their respective shares of their total Asia capacity into Southern Asia are: 
•    flydubai – 70% 
•    Air Arabia – 81%

Geography also plays a part here, with LCCs preferring to maximize aircraft utilization each day, meaning short sectors of up to 4 hours are optimum in terms of network scheduling.  The proximity of India, North Africa, and Central Asia to the Middle East means there are many destinations within these countries and neighboring regions that fit this criteria. 

Now that we’ve examined the expansion of networks and capacity in the Middle East, in the second part of this market analysis we’ll turn our focus to profitability and competition. Has this rapid growth resulted in a more competitive market? Do airlines remain profitable? And how does all this affect airfares for the consumer?

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