Full text in case it gets paywalled/loginwalled:

85% of container ships that would’ve transited the Red Sea are now going around the southern tip of Africa as of this morning.

The ships diverting from their ordinary course are marked orange on the @flexport map below.

Flexport customers can see which of their shipments are affected in real time on their dashboard, along with updated transit time estimates.

Our teams are working hard to find solutions for customers who’s cargo was meant to be picked up or delivered to a port no longer served by one of the cancelled strings.

Ocean freight prices are spiking even on trade lanes that on the surface would not seem to be affected by the diversions like Asia to US west coast lanes. The longer sailing time around the Cape of Good Hope requires more vessels so carriers have had to pull capacity off those lanes onto the Asia to Europe trade.

Thus far we’ve not seen any impact on air freight prices as it’s the post holiday low season without all the e-commerce demand that drove the high air prices in Q4. A 747 cargo plane can only carry around 7 ocean containers worth of cargo though compared to 10,000+ for the mega container ships, so it won’t take a lot of companies deciding to shift cargo from ocean to air for the air cargo market to become capacity constrained.

Freight prices are some of the most inelastic in the whole economy: companies don’t adjust the quantity of products they ship based on the price of freight—they ship as many products as they can sell, and the price of freight is only going to change that equation for the lowest of margin products. That means demand exceeds available capacity, the market clearing prices can spike very rapidly, as we saw during the capacity crunches (largely demand driven) of ‘21-22.

I’ve been surprised by how little the air market has moved so far in January. I would’ve expected more of a spillover by now.

What do you think, will we see this impact air freight prices soon?

Also let’s all give thanks to the brave sailors who continue to transit the Red Sea despite the very real threat of getting hit by a missile. I probably would be too scared.