Europe has 6 weeks of jet fuel left *[title amended]

[Plump82]

What's people's thoughts on this - is it scare mongering?
My main holiday isn't for another wee while but are we going to see disruptions/cancellations to rival COVID times?

• [Title amended at OP's request to make it clear that news reports are referring to jet / aviation fuel]

You can drive to Italy and the charging infrastructure should be fine. But you would need to get the Shuttle (or ferry) across the Channel as Eurostar is a passenger only service. The Shuttle starts and ends just on the coast so wouldn't take you as far as Paris you'd need to drive the rest.

Ah muddled the two as never used them as find flying easier. My DH is thinking that if it gets to that point we will just regard it as an adventure and hope the dog sitters or family can help with a few extra days either side that it may take us to get there. Keeping fingers and toes crossed it doesn't come to that though.

Yeah. My personal hunch is there will be random cancellations for some unlucky people and everyone else will proceed as normal. But I don't really know as I gave up flying years ago (hence intimate acquaintance with the Eurostar 🙂). Annoyingly I have to fly long haul for work in June and I'm quite worried about that because I'm aware the ticket I'm holding would cost three or four times as much if I had to buy it today. Convinced I'm going to get bumped off the flight!!!

So, being cynical, I think this will be the plan. I think we will get bumped and have to rebook and the new inflated price that reflects the rise in fuel costs. Tbh, I’d rather they were just open about it and contacted us now to say that they may need to apply a surcharge or cancel the flight and are we willing to go on a list of passengers willing to suck this up. Because, yes, I’d rather find the additional money/slap it on a card than completely lose the money for the AI hotel we’ve already booked.

Am so annoyed as it’s an 18th birthday/end of A Level exams treat for my DS and possibly our last holiday as a family.

[And, yes, for other readers, I am fully aware of the war… my family were Iranian exiles from when the Shah was deposed and this regime first came into being, so am fully cognisant of my privilege. Doesn’t make me any less annoyed that we may lose a lot of money or this special landmark in our family has been spoiled.]

Can airlines charge a fuel surcharge even if you've fully paid for your ticket?

Trains are really unreliable from Glasgow. Today there is a points failure.

I doubt it, but if they cancel your flight and then offer you a seat on a flight an hour later, same departure/destination (ie, likely the same vehicle) but at twice the price that is effectively what they’d be doing? I’d rather just be transparent about it and ask us up front, given this is extenuating circumstances.

They won’t, obviously, but we are frantically working out how to put aside a few grand/clear cards so that we can go straight ahead with rebooking and still have some money left over to spend when we get there!!

You still haven't given any sources though, you're just waving your hands vaguely and going "lots of things on the news" -it's panic mongering, even if you don't mean it to be.

Sometimes trains get delayed.
Sometimes flights get delayed.
Sometimes there are traffic jams on the roads.

🤷‍♀️

Oh behave. It was plastered over almost every news outlet. And I was asking people's opinions on whether they thought it was scare mongering. I didn't say anything to make it panic mongering.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czjw2kz0l22o

https://www.itv.com/news/2026-04-16/europe-has-maybe-6-weeks-of-jet-fuel-left-energy-agency-head-warns

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/travel/europe-has-6-weeks-jet-33784010.amp

https://apnews.com/article/iran-war-europe-jet-fuel-flight-cancellations-birol-6e67fafd493861b3858de5548aa77703

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/iea-chief-warns-that-europe-will-run-out-of-jet-fuel-in-six-weeks-two-carriers-just-cut-flights-from-their-schedules-38ff3b37

There, does that make you happy..

No insurance for war from right i understand.

I don’t think that airlines can do that either. We have had a VA flight to NYC that was booked months in advance. Around a month before, they cancelled the flight and rebooked us on a flight about 2 hours after the original flight at no extra cost.

If you regularly travel long distance and international by train you'll know that rail reliability is not something you can completely handwave away.

I'm.a complete evangelist for travelling by train. I love it and I'm committed to it as a low carbon form of travel. I've travelled extensively for both work and leisure, putting in full days of travel (just back from Italy this week; have taken toddlers to Prague on the train, etc)

BUT train travel still lags behind air travel in that it's a major pain in the butt to book. High speed trains have a very short booking horizon, and anything with multiple legs will need a heap of contingency. High speed trains sell out rapidly in peak travel times so you can't make plans before you know you can get a reservation. RENFE sometimes don't release tickets until a few weeks before departure.

This makes multi leg itineraries quite fragile and hard to plan. For example, Seat 61 recommends a minimum two hour window to change between Eurostar and another mainline station in Paris and I'd agree with this even though Gare de Lyon is an 8 minute RER ride from GduN and Paris Metro is much more reliable than TfL.

Northern Spain, Netherlands, North East Italy, most of Germany and Switzerland are all beautifully accessible by train. But Scandinavia, Southern Italy,, Greece and the Adriatic and Portugal are all a bit of a mission and labour of love to reach on the train. A holiday that's been planned as flights plus transfer doesn't usually translate well to being an intercity train holiday and it's not helpful to pretend that it would.

I don't think running out of fuel would fall under the Act of War criteria. That's meant to cover areas that are too dangerous to fly to or through. I think insurance companies would have a hard time defending a policy not to refund a flight to say Italy, because a war in the ME made it difficult for them to get fuel

Time to press the delete button. What have we become? Dreadful. This planet would be a beautiful oasis without humans. Can you imagine how stunning and peaceful it would be.

This shortage is, in part, self inflicted by Europe though. One thing I have learned about it since moving here and war kicking off is that EU rules mean that carriers have to load 90% of the fuel they require for a flight to be loaded at the departure airport, to prevent them filling up at cheaper airports outside the EU. That doesn’t apply to Britain’s based airlines post brexit, and as the UK has more resilience in jet fuel supplies than the EU anyway I have booked the return flights from Italy to the UK that I need to take over the next few months with BA because I reckon they are better positioned to manage the situation.

Iran has reopened the DoH to all ships whilst the ceasefire is in place.

@Tryingtokeepgoing

Tankering sounds great in theory but it increases fuel burn on any overweight sector and adds to wear and tear (e.g. brakes) so it carries an economic (and environmental) penalty.

As a result normally it was pretty much forbidden at the airline you mention but in the current circumstances it would have it's uses so may be It is permissible again.

Tankering also doesn't really help that much on a Long sector (with respect to the aircraft type) where you maybe don't have that much spare room in the tanks to carry excess or you are limited due to take-off and/ or landing weight considerations.....

FWIW I once got denied boarding for a flight ex UK as staff because fuel had to be tankered (refuelling strike in Europe) and that put the aircraft right on the weight limit for the departure at the UK end..

In short every bit of fuel helps but tankering can bring it's own problems and is not a panacea.

(anyhow hopefully todays news means this all becomed irrelevant.)

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Following

Not everyone voted him in though. Certainly not any of my 4 bunches of relatives dotted about the US. They have all loathed him from the word go. They have also had to part company with friends who are not of the same mindset!

I’m also going to Palermo… going first week of May

It’s not scaremongering. And not just jet fuel - Co2 for killing chickens and pork; diesel; fertiliser. But ‘apparently’ the strait is now open. It takes about 20ish days for a tanker to get from the strait to the UK so need to allow for that too.

Yes, we heard it on the news yesterday evening. We have a family wedding to go to in Germany in early September (one of my DNieces is marrying a German man). So I’m wondering whether that wedding will be taking place, or, if it is, will those of us who booked flight tickets be able to get there?

I'm glad I haven't booked a holiday yet as I am not sure how much would be covered for war related cancellations. If we only have that much jet fuel left, won't the military need it just in case.

You will still need fuel - that might be in short supply by then and they will probably bring in rules for locals only 🤣