# Air Cargo Unpacked | Middle East War: Fuel Crisis, Capacity Disruption and Global Fallout

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-freight-buyers-club-5997309/air-cargo-unpacked-middle-east-war-fuel-crisis-capacity-disruption-and-global-fallout
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-freight-buyers-club-5997309/air-cargo-unpacked-middle-east-war-fuel-crisis-capacity-disruption-and-global-fallout.md
Podcast: [The Freight Buyers' Club](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-freight-buyers-club-5997309)
Published: 2026-04-16T09:15:46+00:00
Episode link: https://the-freight-buyers-club.castos.com/episodes/air-cargo-unpacked-middle-east-war-fuel-crisis-capacity-disruption-and-global-fallout
Audio file: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/episodes.castos.com/63bfb95e422709-98786477/2423286/c1e-z31d9t333g7aok7d1-ndrowz07a22g-nof9n1.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-freight-buyers-club-5997309/episodes/air-cargo-unpacked-middle-east-war-fuel-crisis-capacity-disruption-and-global-fallout
Duration seconds: 2980

## Resource

The Middle East war that began on February 28th has sent shockwaves through global air cargo. Jet fuel has nearly doubled. Gulf hub capacity is still less than 60% of normal. And a fragile ceasefire has done little to restore confidence in the region's critical air corridors. In this episode of Air Cargo Unpacked, Mike King and Neel Jones Shah are joined by air cargo legend Ram Menen, who spent nearly 28 years building Emirates SkyCargo and helped make Dubai one of the great global freight hubs. Ram gives his verdict on what this crisis means for the region, how it compares to Gulf War I, 9/11 and COVID, and whether the Gulf's geographic advantage can survive the damage. We also have Bachi Spiga, VP Network Operations at DHL Express Middle East and North Africa, on how DHL rewired its entire regional operation to keep trade moving, and Neil Wilson and Peyton Burnett from TAC Index, calculating agent for the Baltic Air Freight Indices, on what the rate data is telling us right now. And we walk through exclusive capacity and fuel analysis from Rotate, giving a granular picture of what has actually happened to the global network since February 28th. Produced with the support of Ontegos Cloud, the freight forwarder profitability specialists. https://www.ontegos.cloud/ In this episode we cover: Ram Menen on the history, the crisis and why he calls this a temporary setback rather than an existential threat to Gulf aviation Why the ceasefire changes less than you might think, and what actually needs to happen before normal returns Gulf recovery airport by airport, with Dubai at 54%, Doha at 50%, Bahrain and Kuwait at zero Global capacity shifts by trade lane, including a 28% surge on Asia-Europe as carriers bypass the Gulf Why jet fuel is still 70% above pre-conflict levels d…

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