The Quiet Return to the Red Sea: Carriers Are Going Back, With Their Transponders Off

Two years after Houthi attacks pushed the container trades around the Cape of Good Hope, the largest carriers are transiting the Red Sea again. MSC sent seven boxships through the Suez Canal this month. Maersk returned its MECL service to the trans-Suez route in August, having made its first tentative transit in December. CMA CGM has been running services through the corridor since late last year.

What is striking is not that the return is happening. It is how it is happening. Several of the MSC vessels went dark during their transits, switching off AIS through the Bab al-Mandeb passage.

That detail says more about the state of the corridor than any carrier statement, and it has consequences that operators and cargo interests should understand before treating the return as a restoration of normal service.

What Has Actually Moved

The specifics matter because the headlines flatten them.

Per Linerlytica data reported this month, MSC transited seven vessels through Suez. The 23,782 TEU MSC Amelia, deployed on the China-Mediterranean Tiger service, crossed Suez on July 31 and Bab al-Mandeb on August 3. The 13,102 TEU MSC Vega, on the China-Mediterranean Dragon service, followed the same pattern on the same dates. The 9,408 TEU MSC Giulia transited on a China-Mediterranean positioning trip.

Maersk's re-entry was more cautious and better documented. The Singapore-flagged 6,500 TEU Maersk Sebarok transited Bab al-Mandeb and the Red Sea on December 18 and 19, 2025, running the MECL service from Salalah to the United States. It was the first Maersk containership through the corridor in nearly two years. The company applied what it described as the highest possible safety measures, informed customers with cargo aboard directly, and stated explicitly that it had no firm plans for a wider network change.

On July 9 of this year Maersk confirmed the MECL service would return to the trans-Suez route during August, while retaining its backup plans.

CMA CGM moved earlier and further. The 396 meter, 16,020 TEU CMA CGM Jules Verne made a northbound transit that was, at the time, the largest since the crisis began.

Suez Canal Authority chairman Admiral Ossama Rabiee has attributed the return to the Authority's marketing efforts and has urged other carriers to follow, predicting volumes returning toward normal in the second half of 2026.

Going Dark

The AIS question deserves its own treatment because of who is doing it.

In our article on the shadow fleet, we identified AIS inactivation as a primary behavioral marker of illicit operation. Vessels switch off transponders to conceal ship-to-ship transfers, obscure cargo origin, and evade sanctions enforcement. It is one of the first things a screening process looks for.

Here the practice is being adopted by the world's largest container carrier on legitimate commercial voyages, for the straightforward reason that a broadcast position in a corridor where vessels have been targeted is an operational risk.

The tension is real and it does not resolve neatly. AIS carriage requirements exist under SOLAS Chapter V Regulation 19, and switching off is permitted where the master judges that continued operation would compromise the safety or security of the ship. A transit through waters where commercial vessels have been struck is close to the paradigm case for that exception.

The practical consequences for anyone screening counterparties are worth noting. An AIS gap through Bab al-Mandeb in 2026 is no longer, on its own, evidence of anything. Behavioral screening that flags transponder gaps needs to account for a corridor where legitimate operators are going dark as a security measure, and the analysis has to look at the whole voyage pattern rather than the gap in isolation.

Service by Service, Not Market by Market

The most important thing for cargo interests to understand is that there is no market-wide switch.

Red Sea and Suez routing is being set service by service. A carrier can return one string to the Suez routing while keeping others on the Cape. A single sailing within a returned service can revert if security conditions change. Maersk has been explicit that it retains backup plans and that its approach remains stepwise.

For anyone with cargo moving Asia to Europe or Asia to U.S. East Coast, that means a headline about carriers returning to Suez tells you nothing about your booking. The operative questions are which named service, which voyage, what the transshipment plan is, whether the quoted rate assumes Suez or Cape routing, and what happens to transit time, surcharges, and free time if the voyage reverts.

That last point is where disputes will come from. A booking priced on a Suez transit that ends up routed via the Cape carries a materially different transit time, and whether the associated costs sit with the carrier or the shipper depends on the terms rather than on anyone's expectations.

The Rate Consequence

The commercial effect of the return is already visible and it runs in one direction.

Suez routing is roughly ten to fourteen days shorter than the Cape on Asia to Europe. Shorter transits mean fewer vessels absorbed per string, which releases capacity into a market that has spent two years operating with the Cape diversion effectively soaking up the surplus.

The rate data reflects it. The Shanghai Containerised Freight Index showed the Shanghai to North Europe rate correcting roughly three percent in the week to mid-August, to $4,811 per forty foot container, with some lines already quoting below that. Carriers are trimming expectations for a September peak season surcharge, with some aiming for around $500 per forty foot against a market where September futures have been trading at a substantial discount to current spot rates.

For cargo interests, this is favorable. For carriers, it is the reason the return is being managed carefully rather than executed all at once.

The War Risk Position

The insurance dimension is the piece most likely to be overlooked by operators focused on schedules and rates.

The Red Sea and Gulf of Aden have been designated high risk areas by the Joint War Committee throughout the crisis, and designation does not lift because commercial traffic resumes. War risk cover for a transit remains subject to the additional premium structure we described in our piece on the LNG carrier strikes, with premium charged per transit as a percentage of insured value and underwriters retaining the right to reprice or withdraw on short notice.

Three points follow for operators considering or executing Red Sea transits.

Notification obligations still bite. Most war risk policies require prior notification before entering a listed area and payment of an additional premium. Failing to notify can void cover for that voyage entirely. A return to a routing you have not used in two years is exactly the circumstance in which a standing notification process may have lapsed.

Cancellation provisions remain short. Lloyd's wordings typically allow seven days notice and some U.S. wordings allow forty eight hours. Cover in place for a transit next month is not cover you can assume will be there.

The AIS decision has an insurance dimension. A master switching off AIS for security reasons is making a judgment that is defensible under SOLAS, but it should be a documented decision with a recorded rationale rather than an informal practice. In the event of a casualty, the question of why the vessel was not transmitting will be asked, and the answer should exist in writing beforehand.

Two Chokepoints, Opposite Directions

There is a strategic picture here that is easy to miss when the stories are covered separately.

Carriers are returning to Bab al-Mandeb and the Suez Canal at the same time that the Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed, with traffic running at a fraction of pre-conflict levels and vessels being struck and detained. One chokepoint is reopening while another stays shut.

That divergence matters commercially. The container trades, which run Asia to Europe and Asia to the U.S. East Coast, are the primary beneficiaries of a Suez reopening. The tanker and gas trades out of the Arabian Gulf, which depend on Hormuz, gain nothing from it. An operator reading headlines about maritime normalization should be precise about which trade is normalizing.

Why This Could Reverse

The return rests on a security assessment rather than on a settlement. Nothing structural has changed about the capability that produced the diversions in the first place.

Carriers have been explicit about this. Maersk retained backup plans. The stepwise approach exists precisely because a single incident could send the trade back around the Cape within days. Industry expectation as recently as July was that diversions would continue through at least 2027, and the current movement runs ahead of that consensus.

For anyone planning around Suez routing, the sensible posture is the one the carriers themselves have adopted. Treat it as available rather than as restored, keep the Cape contingency costed, and confirm the routing assumption on every booking rather than on the trade as a whole.

The Bottom Line

The largest container carriers are back in the Red Sea, moving some of the biggest ships afloat through a corridor they abandoned two years ago. Freight rates are already softening as the capacity effect works through.

They are doing it service by service, with backup plans intact, and in several cases with their transponders switched off. That is not what a restored trade lane looks like. It is what a calculated return to a corridor that is safer than it was, and not yet safe, looks like.