Is Europe Weeks From Jet Fuel Shortage and Supply Chaos?
Europe’s looming jet fuel crunch is a stress test for aviation’s entire supply chain, from Gulf refineries and tankers, through European terminals and pipelines, to regional airports and summer holiday routes.
With around half of Europe’s jet fuel imports sourced from the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz effectively shut, the sector has just weeks to adapt its networks before systemic shortages hit.
Around 40-50% of Europe’s jet imports normally transit the Strait of Hormuz, meaning the closure instantly removes a critical artery in the global aviation fuel supply chain. With no Europe‑bound jet cargoes passing the Strait since the conflict began, traders are drawing down stocks and scrambling to re‑route flows from other regions.
The result is a record European jet price - about 120% above pre‑war levels - that signals genuine physical tightness, not just market speculation.
“A supply crunch would severely disrupt airport operations and air connectivity, with the risk of harsh economic impacts for the communities affected, and for Europe,” says Airports Council International Europe’s director-general Olivier Jankovec.
“At this stage, we understand that if the passage through the Strait of Hormuz does not resume in any significant and stable way within the next three weeks, systemic jet fuel shortage is set to become a reality for the EU.”
Airports and airlines: the weakest links in the chain
ACI Europe’s warning that “systemic” shortages could arrive within three weeks underlines how little buffer exists in the system.
Smaller regional airports, often dependent on a single supplier and handling less than one million passengers a year, sit at the sharp end, with viability already stretched before any fuel disruption.
Airlines, meanwhile, are cutting flights, adding fuel surcharges and reshaping schedules as fuel climbs to as much as a third of operating costs. What begins as an upstream shock at a maritime chokepoint quickly becomes a network‑wide capacity and affordability problem.
As Ben Farrell MBE, Global CEO of the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply, notes on LinkedIn: “It’s difficult to overstate the scale of disruption we’re seeing across global supply chains right now.”
Policy, coordination and data gaps
The crisis also exposes structural weaknesses in how aviation fuel supply is monitored and governed in Europe.
ACI Europe’s call for EU‑wide assessment, real‑time monitoring and even collective purchasing highlights the lack of visibility and coordination across refineries, traders, airports and carriers.
Relying purely on “market forces and adaptation” leaves critical national and regional connectivity hostage to opaque inventories and fragmented procurement decisions.
Building a more resilient aviation supply chain
For supply chain leaders, the long‑term challenge is to redesign jet fuel and SAF supply chains around resilience, not just unit cost.
That means diversifying away from single chokepoints, investing in alternative routes and storage, accelerating sustainable aviation fuel production in‑region, and developing shared European visibility platforms for fuel availability.
Sunil Sasi, Consulting Manager at Cognizant, writes on LinkedIn: “The skies are turbulent. The technology to navigate them intelligently has never been more capable. The question is whether the industry will embrace it fast enough.”
Done well, today’s Hormuz shock can push the sector toward more distributed, data‑rich and flexible fuel logistics - critical for an ecosystem that underpins €851bn of GDP and 14 million European jobs.
