Egypt announced severing its diplomatic ties with Qatar on Monday and shutting down all sea and air ports with Qatar for national security purposes.
Consequences of this decision will be the following:
1. Because of the closure of the airports to Qatar, Qatar Airlines will not be able to cross Egyptian airspace and will not be able to land at Egypt’s airports; therefore, will have to change routes, which will cost millions of dollars in losses due to an increase in the flight and operating times and fuel costs. Subsequently, passengers will not use Qatar Airlines and will choose other foreign airlines which in turn will cause heavy losses for the airline.
2. Qatari vessels will not pass through Egyptian territorial water and it may be tough to resort to more expensive passages, so Qatari ships may have to choose an Iranian route.
3. The severance of diplomatic relations means the closure of the Qatari embassy in Egypt, departure of the ambassador and the staff of the embassy. Egypt has also frozen the operations of its embassy in Doha for years. As a result, Qataris cannot visit Egypt either for study, tourism or business. It will also be difficult for Egyptians to obtain visas to travel to Qatar.
4. Trade between the two countries has been stopped. Qatar will not be able to import products from Egypt because of both the difficulty in transferring them and the severance of relations.
5. After the imposition of the air restrictions on Qatar by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt, Qatar’s only outlet to Europe will be Iran and Turkey. This will increase operating costs and flight time, which is expected to result in a huge loss to the Qatari economy, estimated at billions.
