Jet fuel crisis threatens summer holidays as Middle East conflict disrupts supplies

Walk through any major airport and you'll catch it immediately—that distinctive sweet, oily smell hanging in the air, the scent of jet fuel so familiar it barely registers anymore. It's become something else now: expensive. Since the Middle East conflict began, the price of jet fuel has nearly doubled on international markets, and Europe's aviation industry is bracing for a summer that could see widespread flight cancellations and ticket prices that will shock holiday planners.

The numbers tell the story starkly. In late February, before the first airstrikes, jet fuel traded at $831 per tonne in Europe. By early April, it had climbed to $1,838—a jump of more than 120 percent. Though prices have retreated somewhat since then, they've remained stubbornly above $1,500. The culprit is straightforward: the Strait of Hormuz has been blocked for eight weeks, cutting off the supply lines that normally deliver roughly half of Europe's jet fuel. The Gulf region produces far more fuel than it needs domestically and typically accounts for about 20 percent of all jet fuel traded globally each day. Without those shipments, airlines and fuel traders have been forced into a desperate scramble for alternatives, driving prices skyward.

The crisis has exposed a structural vulnerability that runs deep. Europe, despite being the world's biggest consumer of jet fuel, lacks the refining capacity to produce what it needs. The continent has lost five refineries in just over two years, while demand has continued to climb. The United Kingdom is particularly exposed: two of those closed refineries were British, leaving just four in operation, and imports now account for 65 percent of the country's supply. Jet fuel is not simply refined crude oil—it's a highly specialized product with specific additives and properties that can't be quickly substituted. This means that when Gulf supplies vanish, the price doesn't just inch up; it spikes dramatically, far more than crude oil itself.

Airlines have responded by cutting schedules and raising fares. Lufthansa announced it would remove 20,000 flights between May and the end of October. EasyJet, which had hedged 80 percent of its fuel supply for the first half of the year at $717 per tonne, spent £25 million in March alone covering the remainder at current market prices. Long-haul routes have been hit hardest—a flight from London to Melbourne in June now costs 76 percent more than it did a year ago. United Airlines has been explicit about its strategy: CEO Scott Kirby told investors the company would do "whatever it takes to recover 100 percent of the increase in jet fuel prices as quickly as possible." Virgin Atlantic has introduced surcharges ranging from £50 on economy return tickets to £360 on business class. On shorter European routes, however, the picture is murkier. Some low-cost carriers have actually dropped prices, betting that cheap fares will overcome passenger hesitancy about travel disruption.

But price increases, painful as they are, may be the least of the problem. In mid-April, the International Energy Agency warned that Europe had "maybe six weeks of jet fuel left." Before the conflict, Europe held roughly 37 days of supply. That figure has likely fallen to 30 days. The critical threshold—the point at which some airports would begin to run out of fuel entirely—is 23 days. Stocks at the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp hub, a key distribution point, have fallen to their lowest level in six years. The IEA's analysis suggested that even with increased imports from the United States and East Asia, Europe would not recover more than half of what it lost from the Gulf. East Asian refineries themselves depend heavily on Middle Eastern crude, which has been restricted by the conflict. American refineries face a different obstacle: they produce Jet A, which has a higher freezing point than the Jet A1 used everywhere else, and not all of them can currently switch to the European specification.

Governments have begun moving to soften the blow. The UK is preparing to allow airlines to cancel flights at congested airports like Heathrow without losing their valuable takeoff and landing slots—normally, airlines must use slots 80 percent of the time or forfeit them the following year, a rule that often forces them to fly half-empty planes. The European Commission has declared that cancellations and severe delays due to fuel shortages qualify as "exceptional circumstances," allowing airlines to avoid paying passenger compensation, though refunds and alternative flights remain required. Both governments are also exploring whether to relax rules around "tankering," the practice of loading extra fuel at cheaper airports to reduce refueling at expensive ones—a tactic that burns more fuel overall but saves money for airlines.

These are measures to manage the crisis, not prevent it. The deeper question—how Europe became so dependent on imports for a fuel it consumes in vast quantities—points toward solutions that are years away. The country had 18 refineries in the 1970s; now it has four. One possibility is scaling up production of Sustainable Aviation Fuel, a synthetic fuel made from waste cooking oil, agricultural residues, or renewable energy. Both the UK and EU have mandates to increase SAF use significantly over the next 25 years. But the industry is still in its infancy, production is expensive—typically costing more than $1,000 per tonne above conventional fuel—and most of what's available comes from East Asia. For now, Europe faces a summer of uncertainty: higher ticket prices are certain, but whether the continent will actually run short of fuel depends on whether the Strait of Hormuz reopens and whether creative sourcing can bridge the gap. If it cannot, the disruption will not be evenly distributed. Larger airports will be prioritized over smaller ones, some routes will be cut, and millions of holiday plans will be upended.