Container traffic through the Suez Canal has climbed past half of its pre-disruption level for the first time since the Houthi attacks began.
Weekly container transits through the canal reached roughly 753,000 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs) in the first two weeks of October, compared with 1.457 million TEUs in the same period of 2023, according to Clarksons Research data. At the trough, from February 2024 through mid-2026, weekly transits averaged just 141,000 TEU, or 11 percent of 2023 levels.
According to Clarksons, 36 percent of container capacity routed via the canal or the Cape of Good Hope traversed the Suez in early October, up from 8 percent between 2024 and mid-2026. The figure remains well below the pre-attack 80 percent of transits.
Data from container shipping market analysis firm Linerlytica supports the assertion of a traffic increase. From the period of Aug. 31 to Sept. 27, roughly 29.5 container ships over 4,000 TEUs passed through the Suez and Bab el-Mandeb Strait. That number increased to 45 vessels in the week of Oct. 5-11, with roughly 47 projected this week. Linerlytica says these transits will soon breach 50 transits per week.
Linerlytica estimates more than 140 container ships, over 2 million TEUs of capacity, have switched away from Cape routing since May.
The company expects a full-scale Suez return within the first quarter of 2027, while Drewry is projecting a phased return reaching 80 percent of pre-diversion levels by February. The maritime advisory anticipates the returns will keep skewing toward backhaul voyages as carriers test the route.
The Suez Canal observed an uptick in traffic in the months leading up to the fall. Suez Canal Authority chairman Ossama Rabiee said 166 medium and mega container vessels used the canal between July and September 2026, totaling 29 million net tons, compared with 16 vessels and 2.4 million tons in the same period last year.
Sixteen services have announced Suez returns since early July, according to international shipping association BIMCO, spanning all three major vessel-sharing alliances (Gemini, Ocean and Premier) and Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC).
This week, the Premier Alliance of Ocean Network Express (ONE), HMM and Yang Ming is adding its FE1 Asia-North Europe service to the Suez slate, marking the coalition’s first return to the Red Sea since it began diverting ships around Africa when the Houthi attacks started.
Drewry argues the rush back is difficult to explain purely based on economics. For one, the company cited the quicker-than-expected Suez resumption as the biggest risk to carriers’ rate recovery attempts, since shorter transits effectively add more capacity to the Asia-Europe trade lane. Freight rates on the route have declined for 13 consecutive weeks.
The advisory’s September 2026 comparison puts the Suez saving at roughly $1 million per round voyage, or $43 per slot, for 24,000-TEU ships on Asia-North Europe, before war-risk insurance and canal discounts.
On a $225 million hull, a one-way war-risk premium of 0.3 percent adds $1.35 million per round voyage, enough to tip the advantage back to the Cape of Good Hope, while a 1 percent premium would add $4.5 million and likely dictate Cape routing.
“The critical question is therefore not whether Suez is cheaper than the Cape on a single round voyage,” said Simon Heaney, senior manager of container research at Drewry, in a forecast released Sept. 30. “It is whether the annual value of recovered vessel capacity, shorter transit times, improved schedule economics and competitive positioning exceeds the expected cost of a security disruption.”
Heaney said the industry’s behavior looks less like a conviction that the Red Sea is safe and more like a series of controlled experiments that retain contingency plans to revert to the Cape, if necessary.
“That distinction matters because the security case has arguably moved in the wrong direction,” Heaney said. “The fundamental threat that caused carriers to abandon the Red Sea in the first place has not disappeared. The Houthis have recently strengthened their position along Yemen’s Red Sea coast, giving them greater geographical leverage over the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.”
The wider Middle East conflict escalated sharply on Saturday, when a Houthi ballistic missile struck the passenger terminal of Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport, killing 13 and wounding more than 300. A second projectile hit the airport the next day.
Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree also claimed strikes on Dammam’s airport and two Aramco facilities, and Saudi Arabia’s civil aviation authority confirmed the airport strike late Sunday.
Saudi Arabia answered with what Saree described as 120 to 124 airstrikes across Houthi-held territory, and the Yemeni militant group warned international travelers, companies and workers against using Saudi airports and airspace. For air cargo moving through the same airports and airspace, the warnings carry direct routing implications.
Lars Jensen, CEO of container shipping consultancy Vespucci Maritime, wrote on LinkedIn Monday that the Dammam attack was a concerning development, noting that the Houthis “have now demonstrated their ability to hit targets on the opposite side of Saudi Arabia.”
Jensen argued that the attacks of the past several days “illustrate a risk I am not sure is fully taken into account by the supply chain stakeholders.”
“The Houthis could shut down container traffic via the Red Sea and cause a reversal to round-Africa at any time of their choosing. Right now they choose not to,” Jensen wrote. “The underlying risk is therefore that the stability of the current container shipping flow in the region is entirely dependent on the choices made by Iran and by the Houthis.”
War-risk insurance has not followed the traffic back down as the security concerns return. Premiums for Bab el-Mandeb transits have held at roughly 3 percent since early September, according to Reuters. However, insurers at the CSN Maritime Forum in London this week said they continue to support owners and shippers choosing to transit.
Andrew Moulton, chairman of the Joint War Committee, told the forum that “[The Houthis] have issued statements to several shipowners saying that ‘you are not on our target list,’ but it’s difficult to know how sophisticated they are at being able to target vessels or not target vessels, especially when the AIS may be switched off.”