With the Iran war dragging on, the Middle East has ceded its role as a global transfer hub to Asia. Since the Iran war, travelers between Asia, Australia and Europe who used to route through the Middle East have begun connecting through airports in Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore.
The New York Times (NYT) said, "Since the Iran war began in late February, the number of Middle East transfer passengers consolidation Asia and Europe has been cut by nearly half," adding, "As transfer traffic at Middle Eastern airports has plunged due to the Iran war, hub airports in Asia and elsewhere have gained an opportunity to grow."
Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Doha in Qatar have served as global transfer hubs thanks to their geographic advantage at the crossroads of Africa, Asia and Europe and strong government support over the past 20 years. According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), 16% of last year's 417 million transfer passengers worldwide routed through this region.
But Middle East hub airports have taken a heavy hit as geopolitical tensions rose due to the Iran war. Major Middle Eastern airports such as Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha closed for a time right after the war broke out due to Iran's retaliatory attacks, and flight operations were sharply reduced. Some countries also urged their citizens to avoid travel transiting the region for safety reasons.
As these factors piled up, Middle East transfer demand fell sharply. According to New York-based aviation consulting firm Alton, the number of Middle East transfer passengers on routes consolidation Asia and Western Europe fell 47% in April from a year earlier.
Transfer demand once concentrated in the Middle East has shifted to Asia. In a report released in May, IATA said flight bookings from June to September declined in every region except Asia-Pacific, while the Asia-Pacific saw a 33% increase from a year earlier.
London-based aviation consultant John Strickland said, "People were looking for alternative routes," and noted, "Major Asian airports became the natural alternative."
In particular, Incheon International Airport, which handles transfer passengers for Seoul and the surrounding metropolitan area, said in early this month that transfer passengers in the first half of 2026 rose 18% from a year earlier. During this period, transfer passengers on European routes reached 213,542, up 63.2% year over year. As a result, Incheon International Airport Corporation (IIAC) achieved No. 1 in the world for international passenger rankings based on provisional statistics from Airports Council International (ACI).
Other parts of Asia are seeing the same trend. Over the same period, international passengers at Hong Kong International Airport increased by more than 11%, and Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport was up nearly 10%. At Singapore Changi Airport, used by about one in four passengers traveling between Europe and Australia, airlines added more than 800 flights from March to July linking Singapore with cities such as London, Munich, Paris and Sydney to keep pace with rising demand.
Asian airlines are also enjoying a boom. Hong Kong's Cathay Pacific said passengers in April rose 24% from the same month a year earlier, which it explained was due to travel demand shifting to other regions amid the "ongoing situation in the Middle East." Singapore Airlines likewise said passenger traffic at the time was up 7%, and that with transfer capacity via the Middle East constrained by the continued conflict there, it benefited from stronger passenger demand on European and Americas routes.
However, it is uncertain how long this trend will last. Geopolitical tensions remain, but major Middle Eastern airlines are aggressively cutting prices to win back passengers' trust. Jeffrey Go, managing director at Alton, said, "With prices so cheap, you may feel tempted to take the risk and use flights that route through the Middle East."
IATA also said, "Bookings to the Middle East are still below 2025 levels, but they have been steadily recovering since April," adding, "Rerouting and outstanding responsiveness in other regions are more likely to be temporary phenomena than structural changes to the air network."