Flagging carriers: war shuffles the Gulf-airline flight deck

0:00Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. I'm Rosie Bloor. And I'm Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. A decade ago an array of fake meat products appeared on our supermarket shelves. They were apparently all set to eat into the profits of the real meat market. The stakes were high and the carnivores may have won. And the PDF file has always had its detractors, but you can't deny their popularity. There's something like 2.5 trillion of them floating around. The problem is AI has trouble reading them, and that may at last be the file format's undoing.

1:02First up though. America said last night that it had used bunker-busting bombs to target missile sites on the Iranian coast, trying to un-gum the state of Hormuz. Meanwhile, the Iran continued its assaults on the Gulf states. Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, all said that they had intercepted inbound missiles. We've talked endlessly about how this conflict has affected the oil industry, but there's far more turmoil going on. From fertilizer to critical minerals no longer passing by sea to another industry disrupted in the air. The events in the Middle East are reminded that the region is not only crucial for global supplies of oil and gas coming through the strait of Hormuz, but it's a vital conduit for the world's airline passengers. Simon Wright is our industry editor.

2:04Pictures of stranded passengers in the tens of thousands in recent weeks show how important the region has been come as a hub for the global airline industry. But not only that, the impact on airlines, not just in the region, but worldwide, may well persist well after the war ends. So the biggest, the most immediate effect is that the Middle East is just a big aviation hub for the world today. Well, that's right. Over the last couple of decades, the Middle East plays a much more central role in aviation. And that's mostly because of the Gulf carriers, the super connectors, as they're known, Emirates, Etihad and Qatar. The location of the Middle East in the middle of three continents makes it a very useful hub for long-haul passengers flying into the cavernous hub airports and then flying onto their destinations via two long-haul legs. And that's become very popular because the airlines have been invested in very heavily by the state. They're very good airlines.

3:07And also the fares are very reasonable. That now looks under threat. I think there's two things going on here. The connecting flyers, they're probably going to come back once the war ends, not least because there's bound to be very, very good deals on offer from the Gulf carriers to bring them back. Whether Dubai remains a tourist destination, on how many tourists are prepared to come back having seen what's gone on there, I think that might take longer. But you hinted that it's not just the big Gulf carriers or these Gulf destinations that are imperiled by what's going on now. No, by all means not. First of all, other airlines flying over the area have to switch routes. Airspace around the Gulf has been closed of traffic already. Many more airlines were using that route because carriers, especially Western carriers, have had to avoid Russian airspace since the war in Ukraine. They're now having to take more security routes around the Middle East transit route, the popular alternative.

4:10And that in itself is adding more time to the journeys and also burning more fuel and it is fuel that's going to have the main effect on airlines worldwide. Jet fuel has become considerably more expensive and the impact is actually more severe for airlines because the crack spread as it's known in the trade, the price difference between jet fuel and the crude oil that it's refined from has surged, particularly for a couple of main reasons. One is that a lot of jet fuel actually comes through the strength of who moves where shipping is at the standstill, something like 20% of the world supply. The other reason is that refining is shifted from Europe where refineries are closed down to Asia. Those Asian refineries rely on oil from the Gulf much more than other refineries. Like an oil well, you can't close a refinery. It's very, very expensive to restart a refinery once you've done that and it takes a lot of time. The supplies of crude oil they have they're conserving so they're refining much more slowly out there. So the supply of fuel is just not what it once was.

5:15So really all of this will impact kind of all the airlines, even the ones that don't even fly to through or over the region. Yes, absolutely, but the impact will be uneven. First of all, for low-cost carriers, fuel accounts are around a third of their costs, but for the legacy network, full-service carriers, it's more like a fifth of their costs. So it's more of a burden on low-cost carriers. Having said that, airlines carry various levels of protection. Some are well hedged against near-term price rises, Ryanair, IAG, the parent company BA and others, and Quantist, for example. But America's big carriers and Chinese big carriers typically don't carry hedges. They stop doing so because they thought they were costly and overcomplicated. And that could cost them tens of billions of dollars if fuel prices remain high throughout the year. Other airlines are reacting by starting to ground aircraft in response to the high fuel costs. For example, Air New Zealand has grounded over a thousand flights from now until May. And you also said that for all this, that the impacts that do occur may last long beyond the war itself.

6:21Absolutely. It really sort of depends on how quickly the oil production can get back up and how quickly jet fuel prices can come down, but also it depends how quickly the Gulf airlines can get back into action. There's actually an opportunity for some carriers. With the Gulf carriers out of action, they're putting on extra flights and they're jacking out their fares to destinations between Europe and say Asia that they fly. Germany's Lufthansa reported a jump in bookings to Asia in March, for example. Overall, demand for air travel may suffer in the short term, especially if surging energy prices drag down economic growth and people are deterred from traveling. But in the past, it's tended to bounce back pretty quickly from these sort of disruptions. I suppose another question is what happens with the Gulf airlines? They'll want to win back some customers and they'll be up for the fight. And I think you'll see some very, very heavy discounting both for travel via the Gulf and also for holidays to Dubai in the near future.

7:23Simon, thanks very much for your time. Thank you, Jason. Around a decade ago, a bunch of imitation meat products began to hit restaurant menus and supermarket shelves. Holly Berman is a news editor in New York. They arrived at a perfect time for consumers who were becoming pickier about production methods, animal welfare standards and environmental concerns. The novelty of them was also intriguing. Most high tech offerings can make their burgers bleed just like a real burger. Even some carnivores were convinced by their meaty textures. It looks like a beef burger. It certainly smells like a beef burger and it chews like meat. The companies behind these products saw their valuations soar as fake meat when almost mainstream.

8:23Countless more startups try to join the party. For now, sales revenues and profits have slumped and meat substitutes have quietly vanished from many menus and shopping trolleys. Holly, you're right. These products were all over the place. What problem were they trying to solve? Why were they so popular? Well, I think the first thing they were trying to solve was offer vegetarian products to actually taste a good. I can say this is someone that doesn't eat meat. If someone like me, it was interesting to see if they could actually create a good veggie burger. A lot of these things did taste pretty good. Not all of them were great, but some of them were. And then there was also this idea that by eating these products, by integrating them as your diet, you could be doing something for the environment. You're reducing your carbon footprint. You're not contributing to cruel farming practices. And so you've got this idea that you maybe are eating something that tastes good, but you're also helping the world in some kind of way. All of that sounds very good. What went wrong? I think the big thing is that in the excitement of this market, a lot of companies tried to rush to it at the same time.

9:26And the result of that was that you did have some things that were great and it tasted good, but then some bosses of these companies even admitted to me that a lot of the products taste pretty bad. And so if you're a flexitarian and you decide to try a veggie burger, just see what it tastes like. And you try one of these products that isn't quite up to scratch. That can be enough to put you off for life, potentially. So it's high stakes for these companies that are trying to make a impression in the market. The other thing that's emerging more recently is this idea of eating well and not eating foods that are a highly processed or ultra processed foods. So in America, there's a bit of a culture war around fake meat. One side of the spectrum, we've got these influences that are touting raw meat diet. You've got Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that's encouraging people to eat real steak and eat real chicken. And the unfortunate issue for a lot of these products is that they are technically classified as ultra processed foods. Long ingredient lists, production processes, people are worried about sodium content, fat content in these products.

10:26And proponents of these artificial meat products will tell you that yes, they might technically be classified as ultra processed foods. But that's not the same as eating a bag of potato chips or eating those Oreos. It's different, has different nutritional values. And is that right that these products do actually have additional nutritional benefits and they aren't the same as eating a bag of crisps or something? A big thing that people talk about with alternative meat is sodium content. And so you have one company impossible, which acknowledges that some of its products do have more sodium than raw, unseasoned meat. But it says that that's not a fair comparison because few people will eat real meat unseasoned. So there's that side of it. There's another side of this debate where a lot of these companies are trying to emphasize that they do have a lot of protein in their products. So especially now where protein is this huge food trend that people are mindful of how much they're consuming and wants to consume more. These companies are trying to position themselves as a efficient way to increase your protein uptake.

11:26So as you say, we thought this was going to be a huge business. What's actually happened to the companies producing fake meat? We could take beyond meat as probably the most famous example of this. So they went public in 2019 at the time they were valued at nearly $4 billion. In 2020, US sales of meat alternatives increased by 45% to $1.4 billion. You look at beyond meat's trajectory since then, an evaluation has since dropped well below $400 million. It's revenue has declined so far throughout 2025. And according to polling by the economists in Yugav, the share of American adults regularly eating these products remains in the single digits over recent years. So I think the problem is that a lot of these companies were excited by the hype, but it hasn't quite landed where they expected it to today. So does that mean fake meat is over? Depends who you ask, but I would say that a lot of these companies are aware of what's going on. They're leaning into flexitarians, this idea that you don't have to be a militant vegetarian to eat alternative meat.

12:28You can integrate it in your diet until enjoy meat. And then you've also got interesting sideways expansions by some of these companies. Impossible has partnered with makers of protein dense breads. You've got beyond which is trying to expand into protein drinks. And what's happened to the idea of lab grown meat? Lab grown meat has been ticking along in the background. So from what I've heard, it's taken a hit from the trajectory of plant-based meat. It's made some investments a little bit more cautious. But speaking to people within the industry, they're excited by it to explain what lab grown meat is. It's grown from the cells of an animal. So the appeal of this stuff, these companies say, is that you can still have a diet that's good for you, good for the planet. You can still enjoy the taste of meat and the benefits of meat without hurting an animal. There's a few companies in the US and Singapore are attempting to bring their products to market. The issue right now is that they need to scale and they need to navigate the regulatory environment.

13:30So in the US, some states have proposed or passed bans that limit these companies from selling or processing lab grown meat. But speaking to insiders in this space, they're pretty optimistic at a federal level that this will not be an issue. And even in Britain, lab grown meat has been cleared as pet food. So it's something that is not going to immediately emerge out of this landscape. They're learning lessons from what plant-based meat has done. They're not going to move as quickly as all these companies have done in the past one because they need to be able to scale their businesses, but also they've learned from the mistakes, perhaps, of doing too much too quickly. Also, it might have a different fate in the supermarket than these alternative meat companies. Some people I suppose you think that it could end up in the meat aisle in a way that other plant-based meat hasn't been able to do so. And that's harder to call those things fake as it comes from animal cells and might well be next to a real burger. And where do you stand on all of this holly as a veggie? You're going to eat plant-based? Lab grown meat or what?

14:31I hope you open to trying lab grown meat. I wish I got to try it while I was working on the story. I mean, I enjoy a plant-based burger. I'll say it, but I understand why it's facing the challenges that it is. Holly, thank you so much for talking to me. Thank you, Rosie. When Adobe first introduced the PDF file format in 1993, someone with whom they spoke described it as the dumbest idea they'd ever heard in their life. Shira Aviono writes about business. Back in the early days of the World Wide Web, users would have to wait for the megabyte-sized files to download very slowly over their dial-up internet, and then wait some more for their personal computers to run to them.

15:32But the PDF project eventually triumphed over its haters, because sharing digital files quickly became essential in the following decades, especially after America's tax authority began using the file type exclusively for Americans who wanted to fill out digital tax forms. But, after more than 30 years of dominance, the PDF is in peril. People have always had complaints about PDFs. They're kind of difficult to view on mobile, copying data from one to another is a bit fiddly, and they've had issues in the past with accessibility for people that use screen readers. They've also been a vehicle for many cyber-attacks. About a fifth of email-based cyber-attacks are hidden within PDF attachments, according to one cyber security firm. But lately, a new source of criticism has emerged. Large language models behind Generate AI are often very confused by PDFs.

16:33They don't understand the difference, for example, between text that's set in vertical columns and text that should be read horizontally across the page. They also have a hard time distinguishing between captions, headings, image descriptions, and other things. So this general category of document semantics is something that LLMs find very difficult. And because of a lot of important information is contained within PDFs, this is a major source of large language models hallucinations. Some startups are actually trying to solve this problem, not by creating AI tools that are good at parsing document semantics, but rather by saying that we need to move on finally from the PDF. But some people argue that the problem with the PDF is not in the file, but in the way that we use it. PDF defenders say there's no issue with PDF. It's working perfectly well. We just need to build AI tools that can deal with it properly. So for example, Adobe, which doesn't manage the PDF anymore, but is still a really important protector of the file format,

17:37has made an AI assistant for Acrobat that's good at doing things like parsing document semantics. And Google has also rolled out a tool for developers that use its Gemini models that makes ingesting PDFs a lot easier. So there's this debate. Are these issues between AI and the PDF fundamental? Or are they things that can easily be solved by tweaking models? Really only time will tell if the great reign of the PDF is over. That's all for this episode of The Intelligence. See you back here tomorrow.

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