Gulf carriers pull winter capacity forward as widebody availability stays tight

The pattern across filed winter schedules is consistent: frequencies that would normally appear in December are being flown from October. With new widebody deliveries still constrained and the lease market for mid-life twins effectively cleared, the capacity a carrier holds in October is the capacity it will have in February. That reverses the usual seasonal logic — rather than matching aircraft to demand, operators are matching schedules to the aircraft they are certain of. The losers are carriers without long-term lease cover, who now face a winter market where availability is priced accordingly.