UK Jet Fuel Shortage — Live Status & Travel Impact

Update, 29 September. UK diesel has set an all-time high. The RAC’s average reached 199.18p a litre on 28 September, above the 199.09p record of 25 June 2022, with petrol at 174.13p; filling a 55-litre family car with diesel now costs nearly £110 and petrol about £96. The RAC says fuel duty could add another 5p a litre by spring if the current cut expires as scheduled, and that the government could ease pressure with a duty or VAT cut. The rise tracks the international distillate market rather than a British supply problem. Two things moved it this month: Brent settled $105.28 on 28 September after a $4 intraday spike on President Trump’s rejection of Iran’s seven-day reopening plan, and Washington floated, then denied, a 90-day ban on US diesel exports on 23 September — a reminder that the cargoes the UK imports are themselves exposed to policy in the exporting country.

Update, 22 September. No fresh UK-specific retail deterioration has been confirmed this week, and GEF is not going to manufacture one: the jet-fuel cover watch and the Lindsey and Grangemouth closures remain the live structural exposures, unchanged. What has changed is the backdrop, in two ways that matter here.

First, diesel has decoupled from crude. Brent settled $105.28 on 28 September, a few dollars below its mid-September highs near $107.50, yet US retail diesel set a record $6.5276/gal on 22 September and the IEA puts diesel roughly 95% above pre-war levels, trading above $220 a barrel. The EIA now projects US distillate inventories stay below their five-year low through much of 2027. The UK imports a large share of its diesel and its refining base has shrunk — Lindsey closed in 2025, Grangemouth converted to an import terminal the same year — so the relevant transmission to British pumps is the international distillate crack, not the crude price. A falling Brent is not the relief it would once have been.

Second, France is now the nearest comparator, and the comparison is instructive rather than alarming. French stations short of at least one grade ran 16.5–17% on Monday 21 September, with 11% completely dry. But between 86% and 91% of those ruptures sit inside the TotalEnergies network, which has held pump prices at €1.99/litre petrol and €2.25 diesel since 22 July against market averages of €2.18 and €2.42. That is a price cap concentrating demand onto one estate faster than road tankers can cycle — French strategic reserves are full and refineries are at maximum capacity. The UK has no equivalent administered price, so the specific failure mode emptying French forecourts does not have a British analogue. The exposure here remains import dependence and thin refining cover, which is a slower and different risk.

The UK situation has held steady on the ground even as the underlying Hormuz crisis has hardened. Before this week’s short-lived reopening offer, the diplomatic track had been empty rather than merely stalled: the 17 June Memorandum of Understanding expired on 17 August with no successor framework, and traffic has settled at roughly a tenth of the pre-war norm — roughly four to six vessels a day (MarineTraffic via NBC News, Sep 5-6), down from 11-12 in late August. Brent closed above $105 on Monday 14 September, with WTI moving toward $102 on Tuesday. The "economic D-day" was enacted on 24 August as "Operation Economic Outcast" — roughly 60 designations across the UAE, Hong Kong, China, Singapore and Switzerland, with secondary sanctions threatened on Iran’s trading partners. No major Chinese bank was targeted, and crude fell 2.5% on the announcement. Through all of this, no UK airport — Heathrow (LHR), Gatwick (LGW), Stansted (STN), Luton (LTN), Manchester (MAN) — has issued a formal fuel NOTAM. IATA jet fuel sits at $158.77/bbl -- still well below the ~$181/bbl April peak. The Department for Transport's last confirmed analysis of flight schedules shows operational impact contained: roughly 1,200 UK departures were cancelled across the May 3 – June 14 window, well under 1% of planned flights; no fresher cancellation data has surfaced since -- read as continued stability, not confirmed absence of any impact.

The supply position is tight rather than broken. UK Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander has told media there are "no immediate supply issues" while acknowledging the government is "preparing now to give families long-term certainty and avoid unnecessary disruption at the departure gate this summer." On May 4 the government formally loosened slot-allocation rules so that airlines cancelling due to fuel shortages will not lose their slots — a quiet but significant change that allows up to 10–25% schedule pruning without Brussels-style slot-loss penalties. Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Birmingham are operating under a collective slot-relief regime managed via Airport Coordination Limited.

The reason it has not become a visible shortage is hedging discipline. Jet2 reported on April 29 that it is approximately 87% hedged for summer 2026 at $707 per tonne — versus spot Northwest European jet fuel at roughly $1,840 per tonne, more than 2.6× the locked price. easyJet sits at approximately 70% summer hedging at $706 per tonne. Both carriers have publicly committed to no fuel surcharges on existing summer bookings. Ryanair, BA/IAG and Virgin Atlantic hold the same commitment. The hedges are the firewall.

The proximate cause is the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway between Iran and Oman through which approximately 20% of global oil and a similarly material share of refined-product trade historically transits. The strait has been effectively closed since February 28, 2026. Per the International Energy Agency's May 2026 Oil Market Report, cumulative global supply losses since February now exceed one billion barrels — the largest oil-supply disruption in the IEA's recorded history.

The UK is exposed because it imports approximately 90% of its jet fuel and historically sourced around 40% of European jet fuel from cargoes that transited Hormuz. With those flows blocked, the UK and other European countries are relying on re-routed cargoes from the United States and West Africa — at roughly six times the normal rate per IEA estimates. The cost of that re-routing is what has pushed Northwest European spot jet fuel to roughly $1,840 per tonne, more than double the pre-conflict baseline of $750 per tonne.

The reason UK passengers have not felt this on the ground is twofold: (1) hedging by major UK carriers locked in summer 2026 fuel at pre-crisis prices, and (2) UK airlines hold 5–6 weeks of network supply, with major airports drawing from bunkered reserves that buffer short-term supply interruptions. The Goldman Sachs base case had projected those buffers thinning through June and July if Hormuz stayed closed, with the inventory-low point projected for August — instead, Hormuz began reopening from mid-June and UK aggregate cover has started rebuilding rather than thinning further.

If you have an existing summer booking, the most important question is whether your airline is hedged. Jet2, easyJet, Ryanair, BA/IAG and Virgin Atlantic all hold public no-surcharge commitments on existing bookings, so your fare price will not rise even if spot fuel costs do. Long-haul flights with smaller wet-lease operators are more exposed; if your trip uses a less well-known carrier as a sub-contracted leg, check their hedging position or consider re-booking with a primary carrier.

If your flight is cancelled, UK261 rules apply for UK departures: you are entitled to re-routing on the next available flight at no charge, or a full refund. Compensation for cancellations attributable to "extraordinary circumstances" (which a fuel shortage would likely qualify as) is not normally payable, but the re-routing and refund rights still apply. Document everything in writing and submit any claim through your airline's official channels rather than third-party claim sites.

Travel insurance typically does not cover cancellations from fuel-supply disruption by default — this is a known gap in most off-the-shelf policies. If you are concerned, check your policy wording carefully or ask your provider whether their cancellation cover includes "industry-wide supply disruption" specifically.

If you are planning to book, route choice matters more than carrier choice, though the picture has eased considerably since the spring. Mediterranean leisure routes (Spain, France, Italy, Greece) would be first to be cut if airlines needed to reduce capacity again, because they are leisure-elastic — cancelling these protects business and trunk routes. Trunk routes to North America and major business destinations would be last to be cut. With UK jet-fuel cover rebuilding above the IEA threshold rather than degrading toward it, the acute capacity-pressure scenario the Goldman Sachs projections once flagged for late July through August is no longer the operative risk — see the forecast page for the current three-scenario outlook.