The severe service disruption caused by the circum-African route naturally raises questions about the impact of deployed capacity.
Below is Sea-Intelligence’s Trading Capacity Outlook database, which shows the difference in capacity on offer before the crisis and under current circumstances.
The chart below shows the cumulative change in passenger load on four major east/west routes from mid-December to the present.
"We deliberately do not include future capacity as this will overlap with the impact of the Chinese New Year. Therefore, the cumulative changes to date will more 'clearly' represent the impact of the Red Sea," said the Danish analyst.
A notable observation, according to Sea-Intelligence analysis, is that the most significant capacity reductions compared to planned deployments in mid-December occur on the trans-Pacific trade route.
Specifically, the Asia-North America East Coast route fell by -7.5%, while the Asia-North America West Coast route fell by -6.9%. Additionally, capacity impacts on the Asia-North Europe trade route resulted in a -4.9% contraction, while capacity on the Asia-Mediterranean trade route fell by only -1.4%.
"This shows that despite the extreme changes in ship schedules, there has only been a fairly slight reduction in capacity from Asia to Europe due to the Red Sea crisis. The capacity reductions measured here are not on an annualized basis but will be in December Mid-term plans compared to what has been achieved so far. Oddly, as shown in the figure, the impact is greater on the transpacific, and it is particularly interesting to see capacity declines on the Asia-North America West Coast," Sea-Intelligence Chief Executive Officer Officer Alan Murphy said.
