Middle East Is New Hot-Spot in Global Aviation Market

Experiencing an unparalleled era of growth, the Middle East aviation sector 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 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 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.

According to a white paper published by the UK-based global travel data provider OAG, Emirates is the 14^th largest carrier globally by seat capacity and ranks fourth in terms of available seat kilometers (ASKs).  In ASK terms, it trails only the three major US mainline airlines.   

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

The airline’s growth strategy is evident when looking at the Top 10 carriers in the region. 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 low-cost carrier, has been the fastest growing, increasing capacity by 63% in 2024, compared with 2019 levels, the OAG white paper said.

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 14.4 million departing seats – although flynas is just ahead by 25,000 seats.

Though the ntworks of flydubai and flynas are similar, the latter benefits from a large domestic market within Saudi Arabia, allowing them to operate a more diverse route network, OAG said.

“It is 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,” the white paper said.

Domestic Markets’ Share

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, OAG said.