The 60 day ceasefire between the United States and Iran expired on August 16 with no extension agreed, and both sides remain at an impasse over control of the Strait of Hormuz. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency’s conflict zone advisory covering the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and parts of Jordanian airspace runs through August 31, and aviation risk trackers are explicit that the date is a scheduled review point, not a promised reopening.
TDN covered the distribution angle on this conflict in July, when Kuwait’s airspace first closed and Gulf carriers were absorbing cancellations in real time. That piece documented a specific, structural weakness in how NDC handles involuntary servicing during disruption, and it closed with a commitment to revisit the angle if better data became available. The ceasefire’s rise and fall over the past two months has produced a useful new test of that question, just not the clean dataset anyone would have wanted.
What the quiet window showed
Between the ceasefire taking effect in mid June and its collapse in mid August, Gulf carriers used the calmer stretch to rebuild. Gulf Air restored roughly 75 percent of its network. Etihad reported operations reaching approximately 93 percent of pre conflict capacity, with overall capacity up around 10 percent against the prior summer as the airline leaned on new China and Africa routes to offset the disruption elsewhere. That stretch was the longest sustained recovery period this conflict has produced so far. It is the closest thing to a controlled test of whether NDC’s involuntary servicing performance improves when carriers get sustained operational breathing room rather than a single chaotic weekend. Under NDC’s offer and order model, the airline retains control of the order, which can leave agency systems without the same automated servicing capabilities they have with traditional EDIFACT bookings. That becomes particularly important during involuntary schedule changes, while interline rebooking across carriers has historically moved more easily through legacy GDS infrastructure.
Whether it actually improved is not something TDN can verify independently. No airline or GDS has published disruption specific servicing data from this recovery window, and the claims available publicly are limited to capacity percentages and route counts, not booking channel performance during rebuild. That is a genuine reporting gap, and it is the one worth chasing before drawing conclusions either way.
Why the timing matters now
The practical question for TMCs, OTAs, and corporate travel buyers across TDN’s MENA anchor markets is not whether this conflict resolves. There is no reliable answer to that yet. It is how to book through a fourth quarter that just lost its most stable planning assumption. Airlines that spent July and August restoring routes on the expectation of a durable ceasefire are now back to the same short cycle of rolling extensions and unpublished contingency plans that defined the spring. Individual carrier suspension notices are typically only visible in booking systems a few weeks out, which means a route that looks normal in a search result today can still be flying a diversion by October.
For distribution specifically, this is the second real test inside four months, and it arrives with the added complication that some Gulf carriers now have partially rebuilt schedules to unwind again rather than a single disruption to manage from a standing start. Whether the servicing gap flagged in this publication’s July coverage has narrowed, held steady, or gotten harder to manage with two disruption cycles stacked on top of each other is the open question TDN is now tracking directly with distribution vendors serving the region.
This is a live situation. Ceasefire status, airspace advisories, and individual carrier schedules are all subject to change after this piece is published, and figures cited here reflect reporting available as of August 24, 2026.
