The Middle East Crisis Is Reshaping How Southeast Asia Books Flights

Southeast Asia went from having plenty of flights to having fewer. That change affects how travelers should search and book.

From a distant crisis to fewer flights

For several years, air travel in Southeast Asia had been growing. Airlines were adding more international flights, connecting more cities, and carrying more passengers than in previous years. This summer was expected to continue that pattern.

That changed because of events far from the region. A crisis in the Middle East pushed up the price of fuel and other running costs for airlines. The link is closer than it first appears: fuel is one of the largest costs an airline has, and fuel prices are closely tied to oil. Because the Middle East is a major source of the world's oil, trouble there tends to push fuel prices higher around the world. When flying becomes more expensive to operate, some routes stop making enough money to be worth running, and airlines respond by cutting flights.

That is what happened here, and the size of the change was unusual. According to schedule data from OAG, a company that tracks flights, airlines normally adjust their plans only slightly from month to month, often by around one percent. This time they removed millions of scheduled seats from the region's summer season in the space of a few weeks, with the deepest cuts in the earliest months. Thailand and Malaysia lost some of the largest numbers of seats, and most of the cuts fell on shorter flights within Asia, which are the flights most people in the region use. The growth that had been expected turned into something close to flat, or even a small drop compared with the year before.

For travelers, this shows up in two ways: there are fewer flights to choose from, and the ones that remain often cost more. And it changes what makes a trip easy or hard to book.

Why fewer seats change how you should book

Fewer flights do not only mean higher prices. They also change the way a traveler should search. When seats are plentiful, a person can take their time, because if they miss one good fare, another usually comes along soon. When seats are limited, a good option that is missed may simply not come back.

"Booking when there are lots of seats and booking when there are few are almost opposite situations," says Jefry Widianata, Chief of Product at Airpaz. "When there are plenty of seats, like on some US routes right now, the job is to help people find the cheapest one among many. When seats are limited, the job changes. Now it is about helping someone find any good option before it is gone."

So a trip that once rewarded patience now rewards a wider search and a quicker decision.

Seeing more airlines, and using the tools

The main thing that helps when seats are limited, Widianata says, is being able to see a wide range of airlines at once, instead of checking only one or two.

"If you only look at one or two airlines and they have both cut the route you want, you might think the trip is not possible, when in fact another airline is still flying it," he says. "On Airpaz you can see more than 450 airlines at once, which often turns 'there are no seats' into 'here are the seats that are left.'"

A few tools help once those options are in view. The Shopping Cart lets a traveler hold the remaining options side by side and compare them before they are gone. The Round-trip Combo Price can put together two flights a traveler might not think to combine on their own, which can keep a trip possible when direct round trips are limited or expensive. And Cabin Class Options make it easy to compare a different class when the cheapest seats are already taken. Membership, he adds, offers member prices and quicker repeat booking, which helps a little more when acting fast matters.

"These tools do not create seats," he says. "What they do is help you see and compare what is actually left, so a limited market does not turn into a confusing one."

What booking tools can and cannot do

Widianata is honest about the limits. A booking site cannot bring back flights that airlines have chosen not to run, and it cannot make a market with fewer flights cheap.

"I cannot invent flights, and I will not pretend otherwise," he says. "What a good tool can do is make sure that when seats are limited, finding and booking the right one is as clear and quick as possible."

The comparison between the two regions is a useful way to see it. In the United States, with plenty of flights, the aim is to find the cheapest option. In Southeast Asia, with fewer flights, the aim is to find and book any good option before it disappears. The tools can be the same; what a traveler needs from them changes with the situation.