The war in the Middle East has started to hit flight bookings, with airlines saying that the soaring price of oil would probably mean a rise in air fares by the end of the summer.

easyJet’s chief executive, Kenton Jarvis, said that while the airline had hedged much of its fuel into next year, avoiding soaring kerosene prices was “unavoidable” and that some of the increased costs would have to be passed onto the customer in higher ticket prices.

He said that the conflict had meant that forward bookings for summer had started to slow. Due to their proximity to the conflict, flights to Turkey, Cyprus and Egypt were seeing the greatest drop in bookings, with travellers turning instead to destinations such as Spain, Greece and Portugal, which were “holding up pretty firmly”.