The 2026 Jet Fuel Crisis,
Explained

This page sets out what happened, what caused it, what airlines did in response, and what remains exposed.

28 February 2026. Strikes began. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz was progressive rather than instantaneous: traffic fell about 70 per cent within days and approached zero in early March. The strait carries roughly 20.9 million barrels a day of crude and products, close to a fifth of global petroleum liquids, and a disproportionate share of the middle distillates that become jet fuel.

March. War risk premiums repriced faster than physical supply. Transits fell below a tenth of pre conflict levels. In the week commencing 23 April there were 24 transits against 65 the week before, and none at all on 23 April itself. Vessels that did sail were increasingly outside mainstream ownership and insurance: the share of transits accounted for by the shadow fleet rose from between 10 and 15 per cent before the conflict to roughly 80 per cent during it. Iran's formal declaration barring vessels bound for the United States, Israel and allied ports followed on 27 March.

April. The price peaked. Amsterdam Rotterdam Antwerp jet stocks fell to 597,000 tonnes on 15 April, the lowest since April 2020. Some European countries were down to twenty days of cover. A two week ceasefire was announced on 8 April and did not hold. Airlines began modelling capacity reductions, and European transport and energy officials began discussing coordinated reserve releases.

May and June. European jet stocks reached 38 million barrels in early June, about twenty four days of cover against an International Energy Agency threshold of twenty three days below which physical shortage becomes a live risk. The shortage did not arrive. United States refiners pushed jet yields to records, four week average US jet production passed two million barrels a day for the first time, and exports to Europe hit a record 442,000 barrels a day in the week to 3 April. An emergency stock release coordinated by the IEA, reported at about 400 million barrels, added to the relief. By early June, Saudi flows to Europe via the Red Sea were running above pre closure levels.

17 June. A ceasefire memorandum was signed. Jet fuel fell to $116.63 in the week to 26 June, its lowest since the crisis began.

July and August. The price went back up. By the week to 31 July it was $158.77, and the most recent published print is $163.87 on 25 August. Atlantic Basin refining margins hit all time highs in July. The IEA recorded European product cracks setting new records again in August. A market that had solved its volume problem was still setting margin records.

Boston Warwick published the only public airport level risk ranking during the crisis. Fifty airports were scored on four inputs: estimated daily jet fuel consumption, days of on site stock, the quality of the national reserve behind them, and direct exposure to Middle East and Hormuz supply. Seven snapshots were published between 23 April and 15 June 2026, which is what makes the dataset useful: it records movement rather than a single reading.

The movement is the finding. On 23 April, London Gatwick ranked first in Europe with five to eight days of on site stock, the highest immediate physical risk on the continent. By 15 June it had fallen to fourth and its cover had recovered to eleven to fourteen days, on the strength of arriving United States Gulf cargoes. Heathrow, fifth by June with twelve to fifteen days, benefited most of all from transatlantic supply.

Northern Italy did not recover. Milan Malpensa and Linate took first place and held it, at five to eight days of cover, with Treviso second at four to seven days and Venice third at six to nine. The Italian cluster combined thin stock, a national buffer scored low to medium, and high Middle East exposure, and it was still under targeted restrictions in June when the British airports had been resupplied. Two airports with the same days of cover are not carrying the same risk if one of them sits at the end of a transatlantic pipeline and the other does not.

Elsewhere the ranking captured second order effects that would otherwise have gone unrecorded. Alicante and Faro each climbed four places on the late May holiday surge and gave the places back by mid June as traffic normalised. Gothenburg, Stavanger and Bergen all rose after a Swedish government fuel conservation announcement, an example of an advisory in one country moving the risk profile of airports in another.

A separate assessment covered the twenty non European countries most exposed, where limited domestic refining and thin national reserves produced conditions more severe than anything Europe experienced.

Both datasets are available from the research page.

The acute phase ended without a systemic failure. The supply map did not go back to where it started.

United States substitution became structural. US refiners spent the crisis as the world's jet fuel shock absorber. Gulf Coast jet exports hit an all time high of 307,000 barrels a day in January and exports to Europe set a record in the week to 3 April. That trade did not unwind when the strait reopened, because the European refining capacity it replaced has not come back.

The regional price ranking inverted. For most of the past decade a fuel planner in Houston paid more than one in Frankfurt. In the last week of January, North America was the most expensive major market in the world at $99.96, five dollars above the global average, and Europe sat at $96.37. By the end of July North America had fallen to $158.56, fractionally below the global average, and Europe had climbed to $164.97, more than six dollars above it. The transatlantic spread swung by ten dollars a barrel in six months without either market experiencing a shortage. A high price is a problem every airline shares. A price that is high in one region and less high in another moves margin between carriers competing on the same routes.

Structural supply changes stuck. Energy Aspects put Europe's jet fuel deficit at roughly 600,000 barrels a day in the third quarter of 2026, against a United States surplus of 116,000 and an Asia Pacific surplus of 425,000. Europe was the deficit region before the war. It is the deficit region now, for reasons that are structural rather than geopolitical.

Boston Warwick also covered the UAE's departure from OPEC in April 2026 as a separate development with its own consequences for Gulf production policy. Its effect on the fuel price is not something the published data allows anyone to isolate, and this page does not claim one.

Boston Warwick has tracked the crisis since the first week of the closure. The published record includes the Top 50 European Airport Risk Ranking across three snapshots, the assessment of the twenty most exposed non European countries, the downloadable Hormuz Crisis presentation, and weekly analysis of stock levels, tanker flows and airline response.

The analysis is set out at length in the special report The $159 Barrel, which decomposes the delivered price, traces where the cost landed across airlines, passengers, lessors and governments, and sets out where the evidence stops. It is 43 pages and free to read from the research page. The 2.9 Per Cent Airlines Actually Cut follows on 8 September and measures the capacity response from schedules rather than from announcements. The 300 Day Engine follows on 15 September. The second and third reports are $100 each, or $150 for both.

For retained clients, Boston Warwick maintains dashboards tracking Hormuz transit recovery, European inventory rebuilding, capacity restoration and supply chain adaptation through 2027.