Overview
When geopolitical conditions show signs of improving, it’s natural to expect your logistics and shipping operations to catch up quickly. Often times they don’t, as costs stay elevated and delays persist. In reality, this is how logistics recovery actually takes place. The recent Middle East maritime and airway disruption is a clear example: when a crisis hits at this scale, the effects don’t unwind on the day a route becomes passable again.
As pointed out by Tobias Maier, CEO of DHL Global Forwarding’s Middle East and Africa unit, shipping through the Strait of Hormuz can take at least four to six months to normalize, despite a tentative but tenuous ceasefire to the ongoing regional conflict. Using it as a key reference point, here is why recovery takes long, and what your business should dbe doing about it.
The queue that built in weeks won’t clear in days
When the Strait of Hormuz closed in early March 2026, vessel traffic through this critical seaway dropped by around 80%, with hundreds of ships staged in the Gulf of Oman, waiting. By the end of the first month, between 600 and 700 cargo vessels were present in the Arabian Gulf at any given time, anchoring or repositioning rather than moving cargo.
Even after a ceasefire is announced, that volume of stranded cargo doesn’t dissolve. Restoring normal flow requires working through a chain of steps, in sequence:
1. Vessels trapped in the Arabian Gulf need to be evacuated before any new inbound capacity can be directed toward the region.
2. Ocean carriers need to rebuild their schedules; a process that takes weeks, given the scale of route disruption.
3. Gateway ports like Jeddah, Khorfakkan, Sohar, and Fujairah then need to work through the accumulated backlog, with containers facing dwell times of up to 10 days and onward movement to final destinations taking a further seven to ten days after discharge.
How Air Freight and Ocean Freight Recover Differently
Some parts of the network stabilize faster than others, and that unevenness creates its own problems. Two modes tell different stories.
1. Air freight recovery: Gulf carriers have been steadily restoring capacity, with Emirates and Etihad Airways reporting a recovery of around 86% of pre-crisis levels in mid-June. DHL resumed connections into Riyadh and Muscat, launched a thrice-weekly pharma-dedicated service from Liège into Jeddah, and planned a return to Dubai from Leipzig. However, international wide-body fleets from European and Asian airlines that supply much of the region’s cargo capacity have not yet announced their return, meaning air freight delays and broader shipping disruptions continue to affect global trade. While logistics recovery is underway, businesses should remain prepared for ongoing logistics disruptions, freight delays, and wider global shipping challenges that may impact transit times and operational planning.
2. Ocean freight recovery: Even where partial openings of the Strait of Hormuz have not translated into restored commercial container services, carriers have prioritized evacuating trapped vessels over restoring inbound services. The congestion that built at alternative ports such as Salalah, Singapore, Tanjung Pelepas, Colombo, and Nhava Sheva took time to work through, with those hubs reporting elevated berth and dwell times well outside the immediate conflict zone. These ocean freight delays continue to contribute to supply chain disruption, rising shipping costs, and, in some cases, freight surcharges. A shipment from Southeast Asia to Europe can carry the congestion risk of three or four intermediate hubs, not just the final destination, highlighting the complexity of ongoing shipping disruptions across global logistics networks.
The Business Impact of Extended Logistics Disruptions
The Cape of Good Hope reroute adds 10 to 14 days per voyage on Asia–Europe and Asia–Middle East lanes compared to normal Suez routing. Longer voyages consume more fuel. And with Brent crude having spiked sharply following the Hormuz closure, bunker costs moved with it.
Carriers passed those costs down the chain. The surcharge stack applied to Gulf-linked lanes during this period has included:
· War Risk Surcharges: up to $1,500 per TEU on Gulf-linked ocean lanes
· Emergency Freight Increases: $3,000 per FEU or more for Persian Gulf cargo
· Emergency Bunker Surcharges: triggered by rising fuel prices and applied across trade lanes
· Deviation charges: MSC applied a mandatory $800 per container to all cargo discharged at diversion ports
· Air freight surcharges: as high as 70% on key routes at the peak of the crisis
These charges don’t disappear as soon as conditions ease. Carriers apply surcharges based on loading dates, and the underlying fuel and insurance costs that drive them take time to unwind. Rate softening typically begins in some lanes first (air freight tends to move before ocean), but a full return to pre-crisis pricing usually follows several months behind operational recovery.
3 Ways Businesses Can Prepare for Continued Shipping Delays
Understanding why the disruption persists is half the answer. Acting on it is the other half.
1. Adjust your delivery timelines: Set commitments based on current conditions. A 24–72 hour buffer per shipment is a reasonable baseline for express air freight in the region. For ocean freight moving through alternative gateway ports, factor in a further 7–10 days after discharge before committing to final delivery windows.
2. Revisit your cost plan: Carriers have been clear that elevated costs will persist through the remainder of 2026, with normalization a second-half story at the earliest. If your margins are built around freight rates from late 2025, they need revisiting now – before the next invoice arrives.
3. Engage with your customers before they ask: The businesses emerging most effectively from this situation are the ones proactively communicating revised delivery windows, possible route-related charges, and the reasons behind them. Transparency backed by accurate information preserves the relationship through the delay. Waiting for a complaint and then explaining the disruption is a much harder conversation.
How DHL Express Helps Businesses Navigate Logistics Disruptions
While recovery is uneven and the situation is still developing, DHL Express has the regional footprint which allows its network to react lane by lane rather than treating disruption as one undifferentiated regional situation.
In practice, that means coordinated operations during active disruptions, shipment-level visibility instead of regional guesswork, and exception handling in a way that problems get flagged before a customer notices a missed delivery window.
Here are a few concrete steps your team can take right now while making day-to-day shipping decisions:
· Get a Quote for transit times and rates on your specific lane.
· Set up a DHL Express Business Account for volume-based discounts and an expert ready to guide you on choosing the right solution.
· Already shipping with us? Log in to MyDHL+ to check live transit times before you commit to a delivery date.
· Finance teams can run landed costs through the My Global Trade Services (MyGTS) tool to check duties and current charges before quoting a figure.
Need additional clarity on your shipping options right now? Speak to a DHL Express specialist.
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