Nearly seven months after the Strait of Hormuz closed at the end of February, no major airport hub has run out of jet fuel, according to Cirium, the aviation analytics company.

Mike Malik, Cirium's chief industry officer, said forecasts of grounded fleets and closed hub airports have not materialised. Disruption has settled instead on smaller, secondary stations.

"Since the Strait of Hormuz closed at the end of February, no major hub anywhere has run dry," Malik said. "Nearly seven months on, the hubs are still operating."

Why have smaller airports absorbed the disruption?

Malik attributed the pattern to the mechanics of fuel distribution. Cross-border movement of fuel has continued to function. Moving fuel inside countries to fuel farms has been harder because workers there have less support.

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

The contrast shows how hub infrastructure and reserve storage insulate major gateways. Secondary stations, often served by fewer tankers and thinner inventories, remain exposed when supply tightens.

What do the price and demand numbers show?

The supply picture has not translated into price relief. IATA's analysis for August found jet fuel prices rose 8.3% month-on-month and sat 79.2% higher than a year earlier.

Airlines continue to apply fuel surcharges. Cost pressure on cargo operations has broadened. Air cargo demand, however, has continued to grow despite those headwinds.

IATA recorded total demand in August up 4.4% on August 2025. Year-on-year growth eased to 3.9% in July after stronger readings earlier in the spring.

Monthly year-on-year air cargo demand growth, per IATA:

• April 2026: +4%
• May 2026: +6%
• June 2026: +8.5%
• July 2026: +3.9%
• August 2026: +4.4%

The series traces a recovery from the early disruption of the Middle East conflict, with June the peak month before momentum cooled into the high summer.

What is the forward risk?

Cirium's reading is that the worst-case forecast never arrived. The supply squeeze that did emerge proved real but geographically narrow.

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

With autumn now underway and Hormuz still closed, the next test is whether IATA's reported cargo demand growth can hold while airlines, freighters and forwarders continue to pass through elevated fuel surcharges to shippers.