Seven months after the Strait of Hormuz closed, no major airport hub has run dry of jet fuel despite warnings at the time of grounded fleets and shuttered hubs, aviation analytics firm Cirium has found.

What did forecasters expect in February?

Chief industry officer Mike Malik said the initial warnings forecast "the whole system running dry, of grounded fleets and hub airports closing". That scenario has not emerged. "Nearly seven months on, the hubs are still operating," Malik told Air Cargo News.

"The fuel that went missing went missing from secondary locations. So, in summary the failure is real. It is just not the one that was forecast."

Which airports are feeling the shortage?

Small regional airports have absorbed the supply shock first. Malik named Brindisi and Pescara in Italy, Yangon in Myanmar, and Tahiti among facilities running short. Heathrow, Frankfurt and Changi have kept passenger and cargo schedules intact with no fuel-driven groundings.

"Shortages hit the smallest airports first. That is why the affected list reads Brindisi, Pescara, Yangon and Tahiti rather than Heathrow, Frankfurt or Changi."

For freight forwarders, the geographic split matters: long-haul capacity out of the major European and Asian hubs has held, while regional feedership and interline connections into secondary airports have suffered schedule slips and reroutings.

How much have fuel costs risen?

IATA's August tracker put jet fuel prices 8.3% higher month-on-month and 79.2% above August 2025. That compounds an already elevated cost base for widebody operations, and airlines have kept fuel surcharges in place across the industry.

For cargo carriers, the surcharge structure has largely passed the fuel bill through to shippers. Integrators and combination carriers, however, face asymmetric exposure: belly cargo on long-haul passenger flights cannot pass fuel costs dollar-for-dollar because commercial contracts were priced months in advance.

Where is the distribution pressure?

Malik identified domestic redistribution inside importing countries as the bottleneck. Cross-border fuel movements have largely continued. Inside any given country, however, moving product from coastal terminals to fuel farms is harder, because the workforce needed to relocate road and rail tanker loads is harder to mobilise at short notice.

That asymmetry — supply present at port but insufficient inland redistribution — explains why the disruption has concentrated at airports with limited fuel storage and few alternative supply routes.

How is demand tracking?

Air cargo demand in August rose 4.4% year-on-year, according to IATA's monthly figures. The growth path through 2026 has been uneven:

• August: +4.4% YoY
• July: +3.9%
• June: +8.5%
• May: +6.0%
• April: +4.0%

The June spike marked the post-conflict rebound. By July and August, the rate of acceleration had cooled but stayed in positive territory, pointing to steady rather than surging volumes.

What does this mean for shippers and forwarders?

Capacity on the major trade lanes has held firm through the Hormuz disruption. Spot rates on transpacific and Asia–Europe lanes have not been distorted by fuel-driven capacity withdrawals. Surcharges remain the operative cost lever, not blank sailings or rolled bookings.

For charter operators, the picture is tighter. Smaller airports have lost slot reliability, and time-sensitive pharma and perishable customers have been forced to reroute through major hubs, adding handling steps and unit costs.

What is the outlook?

With cargo yields rebounding in August and the IATA demand series still printing growth, the air freight market enters the fourth quarter facing elevated jet fuel costs, intact hub capacity, and a slower but positive demand trajectory.