France jet‑fuel worries

France’s summer flight schedule is facing new pressure as Europe’s jet-fuel market tightens, even as French authorities say Paris airports are not yet in a critical state. (france24.com) Jet fuel is the kerosene that powers commercial aircraft, and Europe normally imports about half of it from Gulf countries. The current squeeze traces back to the war that began on February 28 and the disruption of tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a route that handled about 20% of global oil flows before the conflict. (france24.com) (cnbc.com) On April 9, Airports Council International Europe told the European Commission that a “systemic” shortage could hit European airports within three weeks if Hormuz did not reopen in a stable way. The group said jet-fuel prices had more than doubled to about $150 to $200 a barrel and asked Brussels to map supply, imports and reserves. (rte.ie) The European Commission has pushed back on the most immediate warnings. On April 14, its spokesperson Anna-Kaisa Itkonen said there was no evidence of fuel shortages in the European Union at that point, while adding that supply problems for aviation fuel could emerge in the near future. (france24.com) (msn.com) France sits in the middle of that tension. AFP reported on April 16 that France’s position was “neither good nor critical,” and a French aviation site citing Le Monde reported on April 21 that the civil aviation authority, the Direction générale de l’aviation civile, saw nothing alarming at Paris Charles de Gaulle, which accounts for roughly three-quarters of kerosene sold in France and is supplied by pipeline from Le Havre. (france24.com) (lf5422.com) The risk is less about planes running dry overnight than about a summer schedule built on tight margins. France’s “summer season” for aviation has just started and runs through October, when traffic peaks and airlines have less room to absorb supply shocks or price spikes. (lf5422.com) Some airlines have already started trimming flying, though not all of those cuts are tied to physical shortages. KLM said on April 16 that it would cancel 160 European flights, equal to 80 round trips from Amsterdam Schiphol, because rising kerosene costs made some services uneconomic, while Air France and Transavia had not announced cuts to their flight plans at that point. (adept.travel) (lf5422.com) The International Energy Agency’s April 14 oil report sketched the downside scenario. It said European stocks would fall below a critical 23-day threshold in June if the market tightened further and Europe failed to replace more than half of the Middle Eastern jet-fuel volumes it had lost. (iea.org) That leaves travelers watching two moving targets at once: fuel availability and fuel price. Paris hubs are still operating, but the warnings from airports, airlines and energy officials have shifted the question from whether Europe has a jet-fuel problem to how much of the summer schedule it can protect if the disruption drags on. (cnbc.com) (iea.org)