Aviation's Perfect Storm

By Tulika Dayal, COO at SkySelect

I've been spending a lot of time talking to airline executives lately, and a question keeps coming up in every conversation: do we spend the cash on fuel we can barely afford, or do we preserve it and defer the maintenance we've been putting off for years? Neither answer is good. And the industry will live with whichever choice gets made for a long time.

The Crisis Everyone Can See

Since the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed in early March, jet fuel has roughly doubled. What cost an airline $2.50 a gallon on February 27th cost nearly $5.00 by early April, and in Europe, benchmark jet fuel hit a record $1,800 per ton in March. Fuel has gone from roughly 28% of airline operating costs to threatening 40% almost overnight. United Airlines' CEO put it plainly: jet fuel prices have more than doubled in three weeks, and if they stay there, that's an extra $11 billion in annual expense for jet fuel alone.

The responses have been swift. Route cuts. Parked aircraft. Fuel surcharges are bundled into base fares, with Air France-KLM adding 50 euros to round-trip tickets. Lufthansa pulled its entire CityLine operation, is retiring its final A340-600s in October, and grounding its 747-400s, all directly because of fuel economics. United Airlines is pruning roughly 5 percent of its routes through Q3, cutting midweek flights, red-eye flights, and pulling service to Israel and Dubai. In Asia, countries are already rationing fuel and restricting exports.

Collectively, the 20 largest listed airlines have shed over $50 billion in market value since the war started. That is not volatility. That is a repricing of risk.

The Crisis Fewer People Are Talking About

Here is what concerns me more. The fuel shock is acute and will eventually normalize. What will not normalize, at least not quickly, is the structural pressure that was already building in maintenance long before Iran.

Airlines have been flying increasingly older aircraft harder than ever because new deliveries have been running years behind schedule. The global order backlog has surpassed 17,000 aircraft, equivalent to nearly 12 years of production at current rates. The average commercial fleet is now approaching 13 years old, a year and a half older than it was just in 2024. And older aircraft need more maintenance. That is simply the physics of the situation.

The MRO system, which has been running at full stretch since the start of 2026, is being asked to absorb even more. Engine shop visit slots are booked 18 to 24 months out. Newer engines that were supposed to deliver better reliability have had well-documented durability issues, driving unplanned removals on top of already congested scheduled queues. Supply chain analysis puts the additional cost burden on major airlines from these pressures alone. It is important to acknowledge that supply chain disruptions have had a significant financial impact on airlines, with costs exceeding $11 billion in 2025. Furthermore, projections for this year suggest that the total may be even greater.

Parts availability compounds it. Tariffs on imported aerospace components are running 10 to 25 percent on key categories. Raw materials like titanium and composites are in short supply, with defense contractors competing for the same castings and forgings as commercial aviation. And the mechanic workforce is aging rapidly. Over 40 percent of certified technicians in the US are over 60, with tens of thousands expected to retire this decade, and not enough people coming through the pipeline to replace them.

Where the Two Problems Collide

What I keep coming back to is this. The fuel crisis is forcing airlines to park aircraft to stop burning fuel they cannot afford. In theory, that is an opportunity. Grounded aircraft could undergo overdue maintenance while they are not flying. But the cash-preservation instinct is so strong right now that many carriers are parking and deferring simultaneously. That feels rational today. In 12 to 18 months, when those aircraft need to return to service into a maintenance queue that got even more congested while they sat idle, it will look very different.

There is also a parts dynamic worth watching. Airlines accelerating retirements specifically because of fuel economics are pushing waves of used serviceable material into the market right now. For carriers stuck flying older fleets because they cannot get new deliveries, that is actually an opportunity, but only if they move fast enough and have the supplier relationships to capture it before it gets absorbed elsewhere.

And looming over all of it is a supply chain exposure that many airlines have not fully mapped. The Strait of Hormuz is not just a fuel corridor. Aerospace components and raw materials move through that region, too. With pressure on Red Sea shipping compounding the situation, carriers who believed their MRO supply chain risk was manageable are discovering it was not as diversified as they thought.

What Separates the Airlines That Come Through This Well

From everything I am seeing and hearing, the carriers who navigate this period best will not be the ones who cut MRO spend the hardest. They will use the disruption to get smarter: lock in maintenance capacity, capture used parts from accelerated retirements, renegotiate contracts that no longer reflect market reality, and invest in predictive tools that reduce unplanned AOG events where the real hidden cost lives. Industry analysis suggests there is upward of $12 billion in reducible operational costs sitting across the industry if airlines get disciplined about how they approach procurement, scheduling, and maintenance coordination.

The fuel crisis will be resolved. The structural pressures underneath it will not. That conversation deserves more airtime, and I will be exploring it with executives at MRO Americas and afterward.