US, May 27 -- By late spring, Europe's airline industry found itself delivering two sharply different messages at once. Publicly, carriers projected confidence. Flights would operate. Holidays would continue. Travelers should book with confidence.

Privately, aviation executives, regulators, fuel traders, and logistics planners were already preparing for something much larger: a prolonged restructuring of global fuel flows, air routes, tourism economics, and even food supply chains.

At the center of this contradiction sits the Strait of Hormuz - the narrow maritime chokepoint through which roughly one-fifth of the world's oil and fuel supplies normally pass. Since the escalation of the Iran crisis, shipping traffic through the Strait ha...