The comparison between the impact of the Suez crisis (Houthi attacks in the Red Sea) and that of Hormuz on the operations of shipping companies active in container transport has shown a decisive change in approach when facing sudden blockages of a choke point.
According to the analysis firm Sea Intelligence, the Red Sea crisis caused a measurable slowdown in global schedule reliability. Conversely, the disruption of the Strait of Hormuz has not yet been recorded as a negative global event; on the contrary, global schedule reliability in March 2026 improved by 3.9 percentage points, exceeding normal pre-pandemic seasonal benchmarks, as shown in the figure on the page.
This type of effect during the Hormuz crisis is, according to Sea Intelligence, due to a clear operational change of course. Unlike the Red Sea crisis, which resulted in a penalty on transit times, the Hormuz blockade created a strong volume shock. Faced with an impassable strait, shipping companies did not keep vessels at anchor indefinitely. On the contrary, the vast majority chose to completely abandon the blocked area, causing an almost total collapse of vessel arrivals in the Middle East.
However, this forced abandonment generated a severe crisis on the land side, but one that was territorially circumscribed. Shipping companies were forced to suddenly discharge their cargo destined for the Middle East at the nearest usable hubs outside the blockade zone, such as the west coast of India and Colombo in Sri Lanka. Since these hubs received massive and unexpected volumes of goods, a bottleneck was generated on land. The enormous volume of this cargo quickly saturated the available yard space, causing reliability issues for unrelated trade routes that used the same transshipment hubs.
Ultimately, according to Sea Intelligence, the data shows that a localized maritime blockade can quickly translate into a paralyzing yard congestion crisis on land.
