Exclusive-‘No winners’ in Middle East crisis, airlines body chief says

By Joanna Plucinska

BRUSSELS, March 19 (Reuters) – The widening conflict in the Middle East will push up airline ticket prices and leave “no winners,” Willie Walsh, head of the International Air Transport Association told Reuters on the sidelines of an airline event in Brussels on Thursday.

The comments come as attacks on oil facilities in the Gulf have pushed crude prices up over $100 a barrel, rattling the aviation market, while missile and drone threats have snarled airline traffic to normally busy Middle Eastern transport hubs.

“There’s no winners in this. It’s going to impact on everybody. There’s jet fuel produced the Middle East that goes into North America, there’s jet fuel that goes into Asia,” Walsh said.

Walsh, in an exclusive interview, said global demand remained robust for now, but airlines could cut capacity if the conflict drags on and leads to shortages of jet fuel supply.

Still, he said airlines were taking deliveries of more fuel-efficient jets as planned.

“I don’t know of anybody who’s now looking at delaying delivery or slowing down delivery,” he said. 

In the worst-case scenario, Walsh said the industry will have to reassess if the conflict drags on. 

“That will be a structural shift. We’ll have to look at, you know, how the industry redistributes capacity, how we would protect ourselves against fuel supply issues.” 

(Reporting by Joanna Plucinska; Writing by Adam Jourdan;Editing by Bernadette Baum)