These are real numbers, pulled from the Cathay Pacific website for a Sunday 12 April departure. And they’re not error fares. They’re what the market is actually demanding right now. We were on the hunt for airfares for Watches & Wonders when these popped up.

The reason isn’t complicated. With conflict continuing to grip the Middle East, travellers are actively avoiding the Gulf hubs that have dominated premium long-haul routing for the past decade. Dubai, Doha, Abu Dhabi: the holy trinity of business class stopovers has become a question mark for a growing number of flyers who’d rather add a few hours to their journey than route through a region at war.

That’s pushing enormous demand onto Asian carriers like Cathay Pacific, Singapore Airlines and Korean Air, all of whom connect Australia to Europe through Hong Kong, Singapore and Seoul, respectively.

More passengers chasing the same seats means one thing. Prices go up. And with jet fuel costs surging alongside the geopolitical tension that’s causing all of this in the first place, airlines operating outside the conflict zone have absolutely no reason to offer discounts. They don’t need to. The cabins are filling regardless.

What makes this moment so striking is the parallel to COVID, but in reverse.

During the pandemic, prices went haywire because nobody was flying and airlines were hemorrhaging cash. Now they’re going haywire because too many people want to fly the same narrowing set of safe corridors. Different cause, same result: fares that make your eyes water.

For Australian travellers specifically, the squeeze is real. We’ve always relied heavily on Gulf carriers for competitive business and first-class fares to Europe.

Emirates, Qatar Airways and Etihad have spent years undercutting legacy carriers with better products at lower prices, and that competition kept everyone honest. Remove that pressure and you get what we’re seeing on the Cathay Pacific booking page right now: nearly forty grand for a flat bed to Heathrow. Wow!

The uncomfortable truth is this probably isn’t a short-term spike. The demand is there, and people need to do business. Blame whoever you want, but this is the reality of war in the Middle East.

As long as the Middle East remains unstable and fuel prices stay elevated, Asian carriers will keep charging whatever the market will bear. How much can a koala bear? We’ll soon see.

Also take a moment to consider what a great stop over Hong Kong is. So maybe it’s worth the extra $30,000?

If you’ve been putting off that Europe trip, hoping for a deal, you might be waiting a while.