The 8,100 teu One Continuity will depart Laem Chabang on 19 October and transit the Suez Canal on 9 November, making the Premier Alliance the latest carrier group to schedule a return to Red Sea routings on Asia–North Europe services after nearly two years of Cape of Good Hope diversions.

ONE's revised pro forma for the FE1 service, which the Japanese carrier operates with Premier Alliance partners HMM and Yang Ming, shows the vessel arriving at its first European port of call, Rotterdam, on 19 November. The One Continuity had been redeployed from ONE's Asia–South America east coast SX1 loop, where it had been sailing since the Red Sea crisis forced carriers to abandon the Egyptian waterway, according to Xeneta's eeSea liner database.

The rest of the FE1 fleet is following. The 9,000 teu NYK Venus, 8,200 teu ONE Hamburg and 9,000 teu NYK Orion are all scheduled for Suez transits after leaving Asia in November and December, the pro forma shows. By October, almost every major global ocean carrier will have made at least a tentative return to Suez transits on Asia–Europe sailings.

Cosco breaks the westbound seal

Cosco vessels are also reportedly preparing to transit the canal westbound for the first time since the Red Sea crisis began — in either direction's reckoning, a milestone more than two years in the making for the Chinese carrier group.

"After nine eastbound voyages scheduled via the canal since mid-September, Cosco will make its first westbound voyage through the Suez in more than two years with the 24,200 teu OOCL Spain on the AEU1/LL1 service on 4 October," Linerlytica wrote this week.

The loop forms part of the Ocean Alliance's Asia–North Europe network, branded NEU1, and FAL5 to CMA CGM customers.

The volume data underscores how quickly the flow is rebuilding. Linerlytica noted that last week "marked the busiest week for containership transits through the Suez Canal since 2024, as 30 ships of over 4,000 teu passed through".

The analyst calculates that since May, a total of 140 boxships have made what it calls the "structural switch" from Cape of Good Hope routings to Suez — equivalent to just over 2m teu of capacity.

Commercial read-through

For carriers, the shift back to Suez cuts roughly 10 days off Asia–North Europe round voyages compared with Cape routings, releasing effective capacity that had been absorbed by longer legs and restoring schedule options that shippers and forwarders lost when diversions began. The FE1 return means all three major Asia–North Europe alliances now have Suez transits scheduled on pro forma schedules.

For shippers, the capacity released by 2m teu of tonnage returning to shorter routings could weigh on spot rates that have been propped up, in part, by the ton-mile absorption of Cape diversions. Forwarders will be watching whether carriers redeploy the freed-up ships onto other trades — as ONE did when it shifted the One Continuity to the South America east coast SX1 during the crisis — or cascade them, pressuring rates market-wide.

The reopening calculus also carries risk. A single resumed attack on a commercial vessel would likely reverse the migration overnight, and carriers are scheduling these transits tentatively, one pro forma at a time.

The Houthi letter

Part of the renewed confidence may stem from a communication the Houthi rebels reportedly sent to the EU. According to a UK Financial Times report at the weekend, during the September Houthi offensive along the Yemen coast — during which the group captured the port of Mocha — rebel commanders sent a communique to the EU's diplomatic service on 10 September promising not to attack European cargo ships.

Whether that assurance holds will determine the pace of further returns. With 140 ships already structurally switched and transit counts at their highest since 2024, the trajectory points to a progressive normalisation of Asia–Europe networks via Suez — contingent on the security situation in the Red Sea remaining stable.