Ships are returning to Suez in numbers, and most of the once-threatened owners keep their transponders off

Windward, a commercial maritime data analytics vendor, published an AIS-derived analysis of Suez traffic on or about 2 October. Containership transits rose 59% over its sample period, from 139 in March 2026 to 221 in September. Vessels of 300 metres and above went from 22 transits in March to 127 in September. Roughly 100 additional large containerships now route through the canal rather than around the Cape, each completing round trips one to two weeks faster. Europe-to-Asia transits grew faster than Asia-to-Europe, which Windward reads as carriers repositioning hulls and empty boxes ahead of moving full loads. The firm’s own caveat is the honest one: “The surplus depends on Bab el-Mandeb staying open, and a strike on a Western carrier could push traffic back around Africa.”

The number that matters most is the one about silence. Of 215 transits since March by shipowners previously threatened by the Houthis, only ten transmitted AIS; Russian- and Iranian-owned ships almost all kept their transponders on. That is a measure of how much residual risk Western-linked operators still price into Bab el-Mandeb even as they come back, and it means every transit count built on AIS — Windward’s included — undercounts that cohort. These are containership movements only, not total transits and not Suez Canal Authority revenue. The revenue series runs in the same direction: $3.2 billion over the first nine months of FY2025/26, up 22.1% per Masrawy citing Al Mal, and August revenues up 57% year-on-year per CairoScene. The Authority’s September figure has not appeared.

Assessment: Two distortions to hold. One is the vendor’s interest: Windward sells maritime risk analytics, and salient risk is its product, so attribute the figures to the firm by name rather than treating them as a count. The other is causation. Bloomberg’s September read was that the Suez recovery is accelerating partly because a Hormuz crisis is rerouting ships — which makes Cairo’s toll windfall a dividend of instability elsewhere, reversible on a single incident at the strait’s southern end. The dark-AIS gap also means the Authority’s transit and revenue numbers measure different populations of ship. The discrepancy between them is where the toll-discount policy will show up first.