For decades, the Gulf superhubs of Dubai, Doha and Abu Dhabi performed an improbable trick. They redirected millions of people travelling between the West and Asia to connect through their airports. Last year, the three airports handled about 182 million passengers, three times the traffic at Hong Kong airport. Dubai alone handled 95.2 million, the highest ever recorded by an airport.

The Gulf’s hub-and-spoke model – funnelling passengers through a central airport to multiple destinations – created economies of scale that redesigned global commercial aviation flows through a routing system solid enough to become the new standard of travel between West and East.

When the US-Israeli war against Iran began in February, Iranian retaliation targeted all three hubs. Abu Dhabi’s Zayed International was struck, with the airport reporting one death and seven injuries; Dubai International suffered damage to a concourse; Doha was also targeted. Airspace emptied and flights were cancelled or diverted.

For those wealthy enough to escape by private jet, charter prices initially tripled. War-risk insurance for a single private-jet journey to the region reached as much as US$50,000. By the first half of 2026, passenger traffic at Dubai International had fallen by 31.3 per cent year on year.

On September 30, a flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv was diverted to Saudi Arabia after its co-pilot allegedly attacked the captain and attempted to crash the aircraft. The disruption raises an uncomfortable question: was one of modern aviation’s great successes built around a vulnerability hiding in plain sight?

The Gulf hubs engineered their dominance. Each hub consisted of an airport paired with its own airline, creating the frictionless closed system key to their industrial efficiency: Dubai started Emirates in 1985, Doha Qatar Airways in the 1990s and Abu Dhabi Etihad Airways in 2003. Their governments combined vast hydrocarbon wealth with a fortunate location and imported everything else.

Aircraft came from Airbus and Boeing, financed through international leasing markets. Low-cost labour and highly paid executives and managers came from abroad. Migrant workers account for over 80 per cent of the United Arab Emirates’ resident population. Dubai’s financial centre established an English-language common-law court system.

The physical environment had to be negotiated too. These desert cities depend on fresh water from desalination plants, which can be targeted, on air conditioning for enormous terminals through summers hotter than 40 degrees Celsius, and on imports for up to 90 per cent of food in the UAE’s case, along with equipment and technology.

Airports and fleets were built on a scale wildly disproportionate to local passenger markets. Emirates, Qatar Airways and Etihad operate more than 700 aircraft, with modern widebody jets worth well over US$100 million apiece when new. Cathay Pacific Airways, by comparison, ended 2025 with 159 passenger aircraft.

The infrastructure is equally extraordinary. Dubai has approved a US$35 billion expansion of Al Maktoum International Airport, designed eventually to handle as many as 260 million passengers a year – almost three times Dubai’s passenger record.

Yet one input cannot be negotiated: proximity to Iran and some of the world’s most contested airspace.

Superhubs’ traffic concentrations are both their strength and weakness. Feed more destinations through one airport, and every additional connection makes the network more useful. Interrupt that airport, and disruption propagates through the same network with equal efficiency.

The Middle East endured wars while Gulf aviation expanded. The problem is not that war disrupts flights, but that in this specific war, the Gulf’s hubs have become part of the battlefield.

This also creates an opportunity for Asian and Western operators to recapture passengers. Chinese airlines have one clear advantage: unlike many Western competitors, they can still cross Russian airspace. Finnair says a Shanghai-Helsinki flight that took around eight hours now takes more than 12, while Chinese competitors retain the shorter routing.

Shorter routing means less fuel and flight time, allowing airlines to fly expensive aircraft more often, increasing productivity. Chinese airlines added as many as 2,900 flights to Europe this summer, including 1,120 by Air China. Singapore, Istanbul and European hubs are likely to compete too.

None of this means that Emirates, Qatar Airways or Etihad is doomed. Their networks, fleets and infrastructure took decades to accumulate, and their governments have formidable resources to keep supporting them. The question is whether geopolitical exposure is turning from an occasional disruption into a permanent condition.

The Gulf aviation miracle was ultimately an exercise in assembling a constellation of imported tangible and intangible assets. Aircraft, capital, technology, expertise and labour could all be brought to the desert. Even drinking water could be manufactured.

For four decades, geography was the superhubs’ greatest asset. The current test is whether geography becomes their greatest liability – and whether some of the traffic they drew from Western and Asian operators will now find its way back to them.