In the early post World War II era American airlines and government policies sought to define a new global order based on global trade and communications without requiring direct control of overseas territories. American efforts to build global air travel networks and a so-called ‘empire of the air’ provided the material infrastructure and the aerial optic geopolitical vision to sustain America’s non-territorial empire critical to Henry Luce’s notion of the American Century. By the 1970s and 1980s, however, US-dominated regimes of aeromobility were challenged by air piracy, oil price spikes, and eventually airline deregulation. This paper argues that we are now in the midst of a new revolution in the global geography of air travel that is forging a new, Arab Gulf centered ‘logic of the air.’ As deregulation, open skies policies, and ongoing technological advances--in engine technology and aircraft design-- have expanded air travel affordability and mobility across larger populations including the global south, it has been the Gulf airlines, rather than the American ones, that have been able to exploit the changing economies and geographies of scale in mass air travel. At the center of these efforts have been rival efforts to develop massive mega-hubs and airport cities to sustain globe spanning airline networks. The paper outlines how these growing hubs operate with a graphical advantage, able to exploit growing markets in Asia and the global south, but also rely on a different set of rules, including the banning of labor unions, the absence of community interest groups concerns with noise and pollution, limited legacy costs, and access to government land and capital. The paper will conclude by assesses the sustainability and limits of these new models of airport development.