Supply Chain Action Points
Read this first — the conclusion, and the moves to make:
- Pull your last four air waybills per lane into and out of the Gulf and rebuild the true all-in cost per kilo including security and fuel surcharges, so the next conversation starts from the real number, not the quoted linehaul.
- Split your Middle East air volume into three buckets by urgency and value, and put a written rule on which bucket may fly at double the late-February rate; force the rest to sea or hold.
- Re-price your Gulf lanes by 15 September using the week-35 South Asia and Europe numbers as the reference, and set a hard ceiling above which a lane is suspended rather than subsidised.
- Before signing any block space agreement, ask for the rerouting and transshipment terms in writing, including who absorbs dwell beyond 48 hours at an intermediate point.
- Set a fortnightly review trigger: if the South Asia premium falls below 50% of the late-February level, reopen contracted lanes; if it holds above 80% for eight weeks, move the volume permanently.
Week-35 (24-30 August) data shows air-cargo spot rates into the Middle East remain far above late-February pre-conflict levels: up 100% from South Asia, 66% from Europe, 21% from Northeast Asia and 20% from Southeast Asia. The surge reflects rerouted volumes and risk premiums, while transpacific AI-driven demand keeps Northeast Asia-North America at USD 5.76/kg, up 2% month-on-month.
The Analysis
Xeneta's week-35 read lands the way most air cargo numbers land, six months after the event and still moving. Air spot rates into the Middle East are running double their late-February levels from South Asia, up 66% out of Europe, 21% out of Northeast Asia and 20% out of Southeast Asia. The transpacific is a different market entirely: Northeast Asia to North America holds at USD 5.76 a kilo, up 2% month on month, carried by AI hardware.
I have moved freight through Gulf hubs for a long stretch of my working life, and I can tell you what a 100% gap means and what it does not. It is not a shortage of aircraft. There are plenty of airframes. It is a corridor that got longer and riskier, and every extra hour of flying gets priced onto your air waybill. 说白了，路变了，账就得重新算。
If any part of your air programme touches the Middle East, or if you have been using the Gulf as a way around another bottleneck, this is the week to sit down with the numbers rather than the headline.
Three figures carry the story and the rest is colour. South Asia into the Middle East is up 100% on the late-February baseline. Europe into the Middle East is up 66%. Northeast Asia into the Middle East is up 21%, Southeast Asia 20%. On the transpacific, Northeast Asia to North America sits at USD 5.76 per kilo, up 2% month on month.
The late-February baseline is the tell. That is when the corridor was still being flown roughly the way it had been flown for a decade. What changed was not so much demand for goods as the geometry of the route. Aircraft that used to overfly now go around, or stop, or hand the pallet to a truck for the middle leg. Every extra hour of routing is an hour of crew time, fuel burn and aircraft utilisation that somebody has to pay for, and the spot market prices that as a risk premium sitting on top of the linehaul. The premium has not decayed in six months. That is the part a planner should sit with, because risk premiums normally soften as the market adapts. This one has not, which says the underlying constraint is still real and still being repriced every week.
Who feels it first and hardest. A shipper out of South Asia is paying double, so a South Asia to Gulf lane that was already marginal is now unviable for anything that is not urgent or extremely valuable. Europe at 66% is painful but survivable for high-value goods, because the absolute rate started lower and the cargo can absorb it. Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia at 21% and 20% mostly shrug, and that is worth noticing: the same conflict, the same week, produces a doubling on one lane and a fifth on another. The difference is distance from the disruption and the mix of cargo. Company size matters less than people assume. A large shipper inside a committed block space agreement is insulated for the life of that agreement. A mid-size shipper buying on spot is fully exposed, and the dangerous cohort is the one that believed it had coverage and discovers the coverage was written for a lane that no longer exists as flown.
On timing, spot transmits the day you book. Contract resets lag about a quarter, because most air agreements roll on a quarterly rhythm. Inventory cover is the real clock. If you hold four to six weeks of cover into a Gulf market, you have four to six weeks before this rate lands inside your landed cost, and by then the negotiation is over.
The part the headline does not carry is the total. The 100% is the linehaul portion of a spot quote. It does not include the security surcharge, it does not include the fuel surcharge, which moves on its own clock, and it does not include the dwell cost when a routing change adds a transshipment and your pallet sits two days longer than planned at an intermediate point. Add those and your all-in cost per kilo into the Gulf can rise by more than the quoted percentage, not less. The second thing nobody says out loud is that the two markets in this release have decoupled. Middle East lanes are priced on risk and rerouting. Transpacific lanes are priced on AI hardware demand. If you move cargo on both, you cannot average them, and you must not let a merely firm transpacific number persuade you the Gulf lane is comfortable.
Let me put a number on it and state every assumption so you can knock it down. Assume a South Asia to Gulf lane where your late-February spot cleared at USD 3.00 a kilo, and assume you move 25 tonnes a month, so 25,000 kilos. At the old rate that is USD 75,000 a month. At double, it is USD 150,000. The gap is USD 75,000 a month, before any of the surcharges above. The USD 3.00 baseline is my assumption, not a published figure; the doubling is the published one. If your true baseline is 2.00, the gap is 50,000 a month. Either way the shape is identical: the corridor premium has become a line item big enough to decide which products you can still afford to fly.
What would flip this. A durable de-escalation that lets aircraft return to the old routings would take the risk premium out quickly, and the South Asia number could give back most of its gains inside a couple of months. Lock a twelve-month block at today's premium and you are buying insurance against a scenario that may unwind. The opposite risk is just as real. If AI-driven transpacific demand stays firm and keeps pulling freighter capacity toward that lane, the Middle East picture tightens further, and the 100% stops looking like a peak.
The mistake I see most often is treating the headline percentage as the negotiation itself. It is only the opening. On this corridor the shipper who wins is not the one who argues the percentage hardest. It is the one who knows, to the kilo, what their cargo can afford to pay before the route is even priced.
↑ Back to the key points