Flagging carriers: war shuffles the Gulf-airline flight deck

This episode is brought to you by Capital One. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge, and it's simplifying car shopping Using self reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks, it doesn't just help buyers find a car they love. It helps schedule a test drive, get preapproved for financing, and estimate trade and value. Advanced, intuitive, and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One. After winter stillness, spring invites you to open things up. With PURA's spring collection, you can explore scents inspired by place. Sunlit terraces, blooming gardens, open air drifting through familiar rooms. It's not about starting over. It's about layering in something new, a small sensory shift that refreshes your space and how it feels to be in it. Open the door to spring this season and shop now at pura.com. The Economist. Hello and welcome to the intelligence from The Economist. I'm Rosie Blore. 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 2,500,000,000,000 of them floating around. The problem is AI has trouble reading them, and that may at last be the file formats undoing. First up though. America said last night that it had used bunker busting bombs to target missile sites on the Iranian coast, trying to ungum the Strait Of Hormuz. Meanwhile, 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 a reminder 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. Pictures of stranded passengers in the tens of thousands in recent weeks shows how important the region has become 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 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 …