For two years, "Cape diversion" has been shorthand for a Red Sea crisis that wasn't going away. That shorthand is now wrong, at least directionally. Lloyd's List reports that Cape diversions have fallen to their lowest level since January 2024, with more than 100 containerships of 16,000+ TEU transiting Suez since September — more than all of 2025 and the first eight months of 2026 combined. The assigned premise that Cape transit times are "still elevated" needs a correction: the trend line is bending the other way. What's worth tracking is how far it's bent, and where it hasn't.
The Traffic Data Confirms a Real Shift, Not a Press Release
IMF PortWatch data via El Estrecho Digital shows the Cape of Good Hope averaged 86 ship transits a day in the week ending October 18, 2026 — down 1.6% year-over-year and 0.8% below the prior 28-day average. That's not a collapse in Cape traffic; the route still ranks 8th among 28 global chokepoints by daily transits, carrying an estimated 5.09 million tonnes of cargo a day. But the direction matters more than the level: Cape volume is softening at the same time Suez volume is rebuilding, which is the opposite of what a "diversions still rising" narrative would predict.
On the Suez side, Lloyd's List puts a number on the capacity shift: 63% of Asia-Europe capacity is now assigned to Red Sea loops. The Hindu BusinessLine, citing Suez Canal Authority figures, reports container-ship tonnage transiting Suez in January–August 2026 ran 54.2% higher than the same period a year earlier. Weekly transiting capacity in the first two weeks of October 2026 averaged 753,000 TEU, per Clarksons Research figures cited in the same report — the first time since the Houthi attacks began that weekly transits have topped 50% of pre-disruption levels (versus 1.457 million TEU in the same period of 2023).
Announced Routing Isn't the Same as Operational Routing
Here's where the "crisis is over" framing gets ahead of the data. Lloyd's List is explicit that the return of ultra-large and megamax tonnage to Suez is significant but "not yet a return to normal" — Asia-Europe networks remain split between services using Suez in both directions and services using it only one way. The Gemini Alliance (Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd) announced Suez routing in July 2026, and Ocean Alliance, Premier Alliance, and MSC followed with their own routing changes, per the Hindu BusinessLine — but an alliance announcement is a network commitment, not a guarantee every string in that network is operating the new way yet. Back in December 2025, C.H. Robinson noted that CMA CGM was the only major carrier running Suez at all, with the round trip via Cape taking roughly six weeks against four to five weeks via Suez — the arithmetic that makes every additional carrier's Suez return worth more sailings from the same fleet. The gap between that starting point and today's 63% capacity figure is the actual story: operational capacity on Suez is catching up to what's been announced, but the catch-up isn't finished, and the mix of one-way versus round-trip Suez usage still caps how much of the fleet is actually getting the full transit-time benefit.
Where the Transit-Time Gain Is Showing Up — and Where It Isn't Yet
The clearest route-level evidence comes from Indian export lanes. The Hindu BusinessLine cites a Tiruppur exporter group source putting Chennai–Rotterdam transit at 23–24 days via Suez versus 34–36 days via Cape — an 11-to-12-day swing on that specific lane. Spot rates from Tuticorin to Antwerp/Rotterdam were quoted at $2,350–2,450 per 40-foot container, down from $6,100–7,000 at the July 2025 peak. That's an outbound export lane benefit for Indian shippers specifically; the same source notes US East and West Coast shipments have not yet seen comparable relief, which tells you the Suez recovery is reshaping Asia/India-Europe outbound flows faster than it's touching trans-Pacific inbound capacity into North America.
What to Watch Next
The next data points worth tracking are whether Gemini, Ocean, and Premier alliance strings move from one-way to round-trip Suez usage, and whether Clarksons' weekly TEU transit figure keeps climbing past the 50%-of-2023 threshold it just crossed. Until round-trip usage becomes the norm rather than the exception, Cape of Good Hope traffic will keep falling gradually rather than collapsing — and procurement teams pricing Asia-Europe freight should treat the current rate relief as lane-specific, not yet a system-wide reset.
