When the Gulf carriers first began to move into the ultra long-haul market, they chose Australia, a place that has been steadily eliminated from the networks of almost all European carriers. The Gulf was an ideal geographic transit location and they built a broad connecting pattern linking a record number of cities in Europe to an equally impressive number of Australian cities with but a single connection.

Capacity from the Gulf hubs to Australia is still short of capacity via Asia, but catching up. The United States is also featuring more prominently in expansion plans. India is a major focus for the Gulf carriers but Turkish is focusing on Central Asia.

Although the next few years will see airlines take delivery of A350s and more B787s and open direct routes, there is still plenty of traffic left for Gulf carrier and Turkish Airlines to carve out.