Middle East air capacity is expected to recover to within approximately 5% of Q4 2025 levels in Q4 2026, according to IBA, the aviation market intelligence and advisory company, following a sharp reduction earlier this year.
Capacity to the Middle East fell by as much as 54% in March 2026 compared with 2025, and year-to-date capacity remains 17.7% below the equivalent period last year. The recovery has since gathered pace: the year-on-year capacity shortfall narrowed to less than 7.7% by August 2026.
A recovery that is far from uniform
Data from IBA's aviation intelligence platform, IBA Insight, shows the rebound is developing at markedly different rates across individual markets.
Domestic Middle East capacity for Q4 2026 is forecast to rise 10.6% above Q4 2025 levels. Asia Pacific–Middle East capacity is scheduled to remain just 2.4% below last year. By contrast, Q4 2026 Europe–Middle East capacity is currently scheduled to be 12.6% below Q4 2025 — the largest reduction among the key regional flows.
Domestic capacity is emerging as the strongest area of growth as Saudi Arabia continues to add aviation capacity and new connectivity. Riyadh Air is expanding its network, while the new Air Arabia-led Saudi national budget carrier has begun operations from Dammam, initially serving Riyadh, Jeddah and Medina, with longer-term plans to serve 24 domestic and 57 international destinations.
The outlook for Europe–Middle East remains cautious. IBA's analysis points to continued uncertainty around demand and shorter booking horizons as key factors limiting the pace at which airlines are restoring capacity.
Asia Pacific–Middle East has proved considerably more resilient. The corridor remains strategically important for connecting traffic, with IATA estimating that around one-third of passengers travelling to or from Asia Pacific transited through Middle Eastern hubs in 2025. During the period of disruption, some traffic shifted towards alternative Asia–Europe and Asia–North America routings, supporting hubs including Singapore and Hong Kong. The relative resilience of Asia Pacific–Middle East capacity suggests the Middle East continues to retain an important role in long-haul connecting traffic.
Xavier Baines, Senior Aviation Analyst at IBA, said: “The pace of recovery across the Middle East is improving, but it is far from uniform. Domestic markets are moving beyond recovery into growth, while Asia Pacific connectivity has remained comparatively resilient and European capacity is returning much more cautiously.
“What happens next will depend not only on how quickly airlines restore capacity, but on whether Middle Eastern hubs can regain the connecting traffic that shifted elsewhere during the disruption. The key question for the longer term is whether those alternative hubs retain some of that traffic, or whether the Middle East re-establishes its previous share of global connecting flows.”
Why it matters
The divergence matters for anyone selling or buying capacity into, out of and through the region. A domestic-led recovery in Saudi Arabia signals that the Kingdom's capacity build-out is now a growth story in its own right, giving tour operators and DMCs more intra-country inventory to work with as Riyadh Air widens its network and the new Dammam-based budget carrier scales from three domestic points towards a far larger map.
The slower return of Europe–Middle East capacity is the more consequential signal for European trade. With airlines citing demand uncertainty and shorter booking horizons, the region's carriers are not yet committing to a full restoration of European frequencies, which keeps pressure on seat availability and pricing on those flows into the winter season.
The Asia Pacific corridor tells a different story. With roughly a third of Asia Pacific passengers having transited Middle Eastern hubs in 2025, the modest 2.4% shortfall preserves the region's role as a connecting bridge — but the traffic that moved to Singapore, Hong Kong and alternative Asia–Europe and Asia–North America routings during the disruption has not necessarily come back. Whether those hubs keep that share, or the Middle East reclaims it, is the open question that will shape long-haul network planning and hub competition well beyond Q4.
