chinese-war.com

A 2027 U.S.–China conflict with Australia aligned to the U.S. China trade stops immediately, Taiwan exports are slowed/limited, and China launches large-scale cyber disruption in waves. This is a planning scenario, not a forecast. Planning scenario, not a forecast. No end date is set.

Transportation: Air Cargo and Aviation — United States (Investor-Grade, Downstream Focus)

Read the Australia briefingReport date 2026-11-07

What happens

What stops, what keeps flying, and what can halt the domestic bank

  1. China trade stopping removes the 2025 China segment book of 2,607,633 passengers and 3,016,049,813 pounds of freight, including 2,486,535,146 inbound pounds. It does not remove the 974,309 thousand system enplanements, which are a different series. Other Asia on this file is not a residual code. Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are named rows.

    data.bts.govtranstats.bts.gov

  2. Freight that can still move is the non-China rows. South Korea was 8.4 percent, Japan was 7.7 percent, Germany was 7.1 percent, Hong Kong was 6.9 percent, and the United Kingdom was 6.3 percent of international segment freight. Hong Kong is not counted inside the China 12.2 percent. A planner who also closes Hong Kong is adding a separate row, and that case is a sensitivity, not the base.

    data.bts.gov

  3. Taiwan is slowed, not stopped. Taiwan was 6.0 percent of freight pounds and Taiwan passengers were 1.5 percent, above the China passenger share. No aircraft-parts tonnage from Taiwan was on the pages opened. The exposure used here is flights and freight, not a foundry share.

    data.bts.gov

  4. The week-1 cash path on flights that keep operating is jet fuel. The spot price rose 20.9 percent from the week ending 25 February 2022 to the week ending 4 March 2022. The accumulated analog is 58.4 percent through the week ending 17 June 2022. The October 2026 monthly average on the monthly series was 4.483 dollars a gallon. That monthly level is a baseline, not the one-week analog.

    eia.goveia.gov

  5. The week-1 operational path is a departure-control or air-traffic outage, on two different records. Delta's crew tools failed after the CrowdStrike update and the airline cancelled approximately 7,000 flights over five days. The FAA NOTAM ground stop paused domestic departures on the morning of 11 January 2023 and the FAA said there was no evidence of a cyber attack. A conflict cyber wave is an inference on top of those analogs.

    sec.govfaa.govcisa.gov

  6. Sanctions and insurance friction attach to the China discharge and uplift, not to a Mexico or Canada segment. Cargo underwriters can still write the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, and South Korea rows. No page opened here prints a war-risk premium in cents per pound.

    data.bts.gov

How hard, how soon

0–3 months

  • Short-horizon price analog: Gulf Coast jet fuel rose 20.9 percent from 2.678 dollars a gallon in the week ending 25 February 2022 to 3.237 in the week ending 4 March 2022. The 20.9 percent figure is calculated from those two weekly prints. It is not a year-over-year peak.

    eia.gov

  • Short-horizon outage analog: Delta reported approximately 7,000 flight cancellations over five days starting 19 July 2024. The same window is 5 days. The direct revenue impact of the incident is estimated to be $380 million. The FAA ground stop the prior year was lifted the same morning and is not this five-day figure.

    sec.govfaa.gov

  • Short-horizon airport cyber duration: Seattle-Tacoma International Airport experienced a cyberattack just before Labor Day Weekend in 2024. The Port had to disconnect the system from the internet, which brought down in-terminal displays. Most airline systems continued to operate. Volunteers assisted travelers in the first 10 days of the outage. The FAA ground stop remains the pause until 9 a.m. Eastern Time, lifted by the 8:50 a.m. statement, and the FAA said there was no evidence of a cyber attack. The Seattle-Tacoma record is a terminal-systems cyber outage. The page does not print a flight-cancellation count. Wave order is a planning model.

    portseattle.orgfaa.gov

1–6 months

  • Accumulated price analog: from 2.678 dollars a gallon in the week ending 25 February 2022 to 4.242 in the week ending 17 June 2022. The accumulated analog is 58.4 percent. That figure is calculated from those two prints.

    eia.gov

12+ months

  • Long-horizon level, not a one-week percent: the October 2026 monthly Gulf Coast jet average was 4.483 dollars a gallon. The structural volume hole, if China stays closed, remains 3,016,049,813 freight pounds. The domestic enplanement series is the book that is still there.

    eia.govdata.bts.govtranstats.bts.gov

Wave 1

Wave 1 is airline departure and crew systems, freighter dispatch, and airport and air-traffic systems. The Delta cancellation window and the FAA NOTAM pause are the observed operational paths. The FAA pause was not a cyber attack. The measured airport cyber duration is the first 10 days of the outage at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, a terminal-systems cyberattack in which most airline systems continued to operate. Ground handlers and freight forwarders are Wave 1 indirect because they stop when the flight or the waybill stops. The Volt Typhoon page is about U.S. critical infrastructure and does not assign these firms to a week. The ordering is a planning inference. Wave order is a planning model.

cisa.govsec.govfaa.govcisa.govportseattle.org

Wave 2

Wave 2 is the commercial layer behind flights that can still operate: into-plane fuel as a price and uplift consequence, aircraft lessors, and cargo underwriters. The plant and the airport can be up while a policy system or a lease invoice is not. This ordering is a planning inference.

cisa.goveia.gov

Wave 3

Wave 3 is the distributed set, here the catering kitchens behind approximately 500 commercial airports. A kitchen ransomware event is direct at the vendor and later than a NOTAM pause or a crew-tracking failure. This ordering is a planning inference.

cisa.govcisa.gov

Country exposure

freight sharepercent

passenger sharepercent

Cost and price shock by time bucket

price changepercent

us revenue impactmillion US dollars

Downstream scale

sitessites

Operating prints

daysdays

ratespercent

What to do

Day 7

  • Separate China-named segments from the rest of the international file. The 2025 China book is 2,607,633 passengers and 3,016,049,813 freight pounds. Mexico, Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea, Germany, and Hong Kong stay on the continuing book unless a later order says otherwise.

    data.bts.gov

  • Staff departure control, crew tracking, and NOTAM monitoring for a multi-day outage. The analog is 5 days and approximately 7,000 cancellations at one network airline, and a same-morning national pause.

    sec.govfaa.gov

Day 30

  • Remark fuel against the one-week jet analog. The spot price rose 20.9 percent between the week ending 25 February 2022 and the week ending 4 March 2022. Do not use the 58.4 percent accumulated analog as the first-month case.

    eia.gov

  • Ask lessors which tails are reserved to the 29,080 China segment departures and which are on the domestic bank of 9,472,296 system departures. The two counts are different series.

    data.bts.govtranstats.bts.gov

Day 90

  • Test whether South Korea, Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom can take freight that lost a Chinese uplift. Those shares are the observed sinks. Taiwan remains a slowed lane at 6.0 percent of freight pounds, not a closed one.

    data.bts.gov

What to watch

By role

Network airlines

  • Park China-named passenger segments and keep the domestic bank and the Mexico, Canada, and United Kingdom rows on a separate roster.

  • Isolate crew-tracking and departure control from a single vendor push, using the five-day Delta window as the drill.

  • Remark the fuel book to a one-week 20.9 percent case before using the 58.4 percent case.

data.bts.govsec.goveia.gov

Freighter operators and forwarders

  • Split waybills into China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and other named countries before week 1.

  • Pre-clear South Korea, Japan, and Germany as the large non-China freight sinks already in the 2025 file.

data.bts.gov

Airports

  • Drill a same-morning national departure pause and a five-day airline recovery on the commercial set of approximately 500 airports.

  • Do not treat a China route cut as a reason to close the domestic concourse.

faa.govcisa.gov

Lessors and cargo underwriters

  • Reprice tails and shipments whose airport pair is China.

  • Leave Taiwan on a slowed covenant, not a zero covenant, at the 6.0 percent freight baseline.

data.bts.gov

Weekly checks

What is not known

Working papers: node summary
NodePrimary impactTime horizonCyber waveEvidence
Network passenger airlinesChina routes and China-bound passengers stop, and a crew-system outage can cancel the domestic bank that otherwise keeps flying.0-3 monthsWave 1 (direct)BTS China passenger share; Delta 8-K; BTS system enplanements
Dedicated freighter operatorsChina inbound freight stops, while South Korea, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Hong Kong freight lanes can still move.0-3 monthsWave 1 (direct)BTS T-100 freight pounds by country
Airports and air traffic systemsA national departure pause stops the commercial airports even when the China route is a small share of passengers.0-3 monthsWave 1 (direct)FAA NOTAM statements; CISA aviation mode
Ground handlersRamp and cargo handling stop when the airline or the airport stops the departure.0-3 monthsWave 1 (indirect)Delta cancellations; FAA ground stop
Freight forwardersChina air waybills stop, and forwarders rebook the freight that is not on the China row.0-6 monthsWave 1 (indirect)BTS China and non-China freight shares
Into-plane fuelJet fuel price is the cash shock on flights that keep operating after a China stop.0-6 monthsWave 2 (indirect)EIA Gulf Coast weekly jet fuel
Catering kitchensFlight kitchens lose the cancelled departures, and a later hit is on the kitchen's own systems.0-3 monthsWave 3 (direct)Delta cancellations; CISA commercial airport count
Aircraft lessorsLease cash on China-route tails falls when those departures stop, while the domestic fleet keeps generating rent.1-12 monthsWave 2 (indirect)BTS China departures; BTS system departures
Cargo underwritersUnderwriters reprice shipments that no longer have a Chinese discharge or uplift airport.0-6 monthsWave 2 (direct)BTS China freight pounds

Sources