Airline groundings expose depth of world travel’s reliance on Gulf corridor

Restart of operations will be a relief to those stranded but may not dispel doubts raised by past week about key transit hub After nearly a week of uncertainty, airspace closures and very limited flights, news that hundreds of thousands of passengers around the world were hanging on for emerged: the Gulf-based carrier Emirates was restarting operations in earnest despite the US-Israel war on Iran. Those relieved by the restart will include the UK’s Foreign Office, after its travails in organising delayed rescue flights out of neighbouring Oman. Emirates plans to return to 11 daily flights to five British airports by Saturday, and will operate to 60% of its full network, 83 destinations in all, including seven US airports and a total of 22 daily flights to India. Yet the partial return will struggle to dispel the doubts raised by a week when many started to wonder, just where will the world fly now? Before the crisis, the three big Gulf hubs – Dubai, home of Emirates, Abu Dhabi for Etihad and Qatar Airways’ Doha base – had established themselves as the crossroads of global aviation, with networks that link Asia, Africa, Europe and reaching out to the Americas and Oceania. Ne