How Geopolitics Is Changing Middle East Aviation

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

This is the Morning Drive. Geopolitical tensions since February have disrupted travel and air routes and aviation across the Middle East. Now the region's airports are adapting to a new operating environment with resilience, security technology, and investment becoming bigger priorities. Now Global Airports Forum returns to Riyadh on November 30 and December 1 It brings aviation leaders and investors together to discuss basically what comes next for the industry. And we're joined by Daniyal Qureshi, who's the MD, Managing Director of Global Airports Forum, to look at how the region's aviation landscape is changing and what the industry should expect next.

Big topics to talk to you about, Daniyal. Welcome back.

Daniyal Qureshi (0:46)

Good morning. Thank you for having me. It's good to have you here.

SPEAKER_1 (0:48)

It's been a while, nine months or so since we've talked face to face. I'd like to look if we can start with this, with the industry, before we talk about the forum, looking back at how air routes and airspace dynamics have shifted since February.

What's changed most significantly for aviation across the Middle East?

Daniyal Qureshi (1:13)

I think the biggest change has been the pressure on aviation, you know, the stop-start, stop-start, due to the regional situation. And I think airports have had to rethink their operational readiness and ability to mitigate any difficult situation, and then immediately restore capacity, restore operational efficiency immediately after, once air traffic is restored. There have been some pressure times. We know traffic has fallen in between 23 percent, it's risen up to 60 percent. So we know traffic for an airport, when traffic goes down significantly, then has to increase and goes down again. So it causes a lot of operational challenges. And I think airports in the region generally have risen to the occasion, and they've been able to bounce back from any daily or weekly surprises.

And I think in the process, they've learned a lot on contingency planning.

SPEAKER_1 (2:21)

Yeah, I mean, resilience has certainly been the word that we've heard and we've used airport resilience, aviation resilience for places across the Middle East. What lessons of airports do you think, what are the lessons that have been learned from those disruptions? And I suppose more than anything, the uncertainty that we've seen this year.

Daniyal Qureshi (2:42)

So I think, so there's of course, the lesson of resilience and being able to manage processes in such a way that they're quick to safely put on hold and then quick to resume as much as possible. I think the second lesson is that aviation over the past couple of decades, I mean, the Middle East has been one of the fastest growing aviation markets in the world.

ACI projected the Middle East would touch 10 billion passengers, Global Aviation would touch 10 billion passengers in 2026 Now we know that was in January this year, that they predicted it would be 10 billion this year, and within the next 20 years, it would double to about 18, 19 billion. So we know aviation in the past and now, it goes through this period of turbulence, after which once growth is restored, it's very, very fast. Now, when that growth is restored, airports, aviation, airlines, they're working round the clock, and they're growing capacity, they're growing throughput on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. This kind of gives the industry, especially in the region we've seen that, it gives it a pause to work on some of the other aspects where they feel that they can increase efficiency. So for example, sustainability, passenger experience, digitalization, commercial revenue streams apart from airlines. So airports in the region have done a lot of work during this period to look at those other aspects of their operations and improve those, rather than doing them at a time when aviation is at full throttle and there's very little time to look at all those other aspects.

SPEAKER_1 (4:35)

How are airports then preparing for a more unpredictable regional operating environment? Because this is now something that, I guess, is built in to operational tactics, as it were.

Daniyal Qureshi (4:49)

Yes, it's true. I think over the last seven months, eight months, all the processes that were running an airport, in terms of passenger experience, cargo handling, airlines, air navigation, security, drones, AI, cyber security has been a major issue over the last seven months. So I think airports have been able to really dig deep into the challenges or the vulnerabilities on all of those operational aspects, and then see where they can be improved, where they can come out better and stronger post a conflict such as this.

SPEAKER_1 (5:32)

Has or how has the geopolitical situation changed the way investors look at airport and aviation infrastructure project?