""Were Not Going To Measure This In Days Or Hours" Aviation Expert Tony Stanton Speaks About How Long Flights Could Be Disrupted

Triple M, it's Robby and Carly. There's been a lot of talk over the last couple of weeks with the war in the Middle East.

What is happening with flights? I mean, there's big disruptions for the airlines and there's lots of questions for them, lots of people about how to proceed with cancelled flights.

Will they go ahead? All those sort of things and Tony Stanton is joining us right now from strategic air to give us a little bit more clarity around how this could play out.

So Tony, thank you very much for joining us on the show. How are you, mate? I'm doing well.

Is it essentially one way traffic at the moment? There's flights coming out, but not many going in?

Yeah, essentially so. A lot of the flights say from Perth to Europe at the moment are diverting around what's called the Tehran FIR, the the traffic control area, if you like.

So I guess there's two things happening. You've got the closure of the Tehran airspace, so you've got aircraft diverting to the north and south.

I'll be around. So that's one thing. If that's dramatic in itself for four or four years now, airlines have been avoiding that airspace anyway, but nonetheless now it's formally closed for obvious reasons.

The other thing that's happening is you have these major hubs, Doa, Dubai and Abu Dhabi, these major hubs that connect Europe with Asia and of course Australia and these hubs are of course under attack at the moment.

And their airspace is also being closed for obvious reasons. So you've got the the Iran airspace issue causing diversions, but then you've got these major three hubs that their airspace is closed, but also very restricted operations into and out of those major hubs.

I guess most Aussies want to know what's next and what should they do? You know, I know there's a lot of people that typically do Euro summer that have tickets and really don't know if they'll go forward.

What do you think in your expert opinion? Do you think that there will be flight disruptions for some time to come and cancelled flights?

So in terms of how long this will go on for, I think any credible answer to that is nobody knows, but I fear to say that we're not going to measure this event in days and hours.

We're more likely to measure this event in weeks and possibly months. There's been commentary out of both Israel and the US talking about four weeks.

You know, what we see is what we see, I guess, but I think it's pretty clear that this is not going to be measured in days and hours when both of these states are talking about regime changes.

They're not things that they're going to achieve in days. They're going to take some time.

So what does that mean for Aussies in terms of travel? If you are looking to book travel, I would obviously avoid these hubs at the moment and find travel routes that are getting to where you want to go that don't include dollar to buy in Abu Dhabi.

I would, so in terms of the routing that you look for, but I'd also look for resilience in your travel plans. So things like booking flexible F is having sensible connection times and just having a plan that can adapt when things might change.

But there's other ways to get to London, other than through, say Dubai. I'd look for that. If you already have a ticket, I would look closely at what the airline is saying about that.

It's an operation about that route. I'd look at your travel insurance. And again, I'd be looking for options and flexibility and what you're trying to do.

Hey, mate, I'm interested to know what you think will happen with these airlines because obviously they need to keep flying in order to stay in the air and stay making money.

So companies that fly through Doha and Dubai and Qatar and all these places, will they look for an alternative airport somewhere so they can continue their flights?

For example, Singapore is probably too busy. Will some other airports step up where they can sort of have their stop halfway?

Yeah, look, I think in the short term, that's what we see happening. And that's what I guess I mean by alternative routes is instead of looking for a connection out of Dubai, you might look for a connection out of Singapore at the moment.

And you'd fly Australia, Singapore, and then off to London. So at the moment, absolutely, you'll see these growth or explosion and these other hubs that Singapore, as we saw as an example, there's many others.

So in the short term, absolutely, these other hubs will take advantage. But in the long term, you know, this is just an event with the passage of time, it will pass.

And then we will see these critical hubs, as I said, Doha, Abu Dhabi, and Dubai. We will go back to that. They are way too important in airline networks, not for airlines to go back to them on the other side of this.

And just quickly, what about the fuel prices? Will it affect the price of getting to Europe?

Yeah, so short term airlines will tend to absorb some of these things, but the longer this goes on, absolutely, airlines will have to recoup their additional fuel costs. And it's not just fuel costs, there's crewing costs, there's less efficiency in the aircraft because they're taking longer, there's potentially insurance costs, there's a thing called war insurance, believe it or not.

So the longer this goes on, the more airlines will need to recoup those costs. Well, I don't think we're going to see anything like double the cost, but certainly we might see a 10 to 15%, maybe even 20% increase as airlines try and recruit these costs across all the seats.

It's crazy times, Tony. Thank you very much. Really appreciate you coming on the air today. And giving us the rundown of where you think all this will go. It's been great. If people want to check out strategic air, you can head to the website streetycare.com.au, Tony Stanton. Thank you very much.

You're most welcome.