<![CDATA[The Suez Canal carries roughly 10–12 percent of world maritime trade, making its traffic fluctuations an important indicator for global supply chains. This study analyzes secondary data from eighteen Suez Canal Authority (SCA) annual reports (2008–2025), covering four data groups: annual transits and net tonnage (with a historical series back to 1975), monthly traffic, fleet composition by ship type, and cargo volume by sailing direction. In addition to longitudinal descriptive analysis, the study applies segmented (interrupted time series) regression to the 1976–2025 series, a counterfactual loss estimate, the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI) of ship-type composition, and a directional imbalance index. The analysis identifies four external shocks of distinctly different character: the 2009 global financial crisis (cargo −22.6%), the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 (cargo −2.5%), the 2021 Ever Given grounding, which did not interrupt annual growth, and the 2024 Red Sea security crisis, which cut transits by 50.0% and cargo volume by 65.4% within a single year. The 2024–2025 crisis was highly asymmetric: container ships lost 88.6% of their net tonnage, and their share of total tonnage collapsed from a peak of 60.6% (2015) and 41.9% (2023) to 14% (2024–2025), while tankers proved comparatively resilient and became the backbone of remaining traffic. Segmented regression shows that of the three interventions tested (2009, 2016, 2024), only the Red Sea crisis constitutes a statistically significant discontinuity in the long-run trend (level shift −67.1%; p < 0.001), with a counterfactual loss of approximately 1.96 billion net tons over 2024–2025; the ship-type HHI, which had reached its most diversified point in 2023 (2,869), rose back to 3,318 in 2024 as the axis of dominance shifted from containers to tankers. Monthly data for 2025 indicate a gradual recovery in the second half of the year, led by the south–north flow (+20.4%) and the LNG segment (+137% in vessel count). The empirical findings are then mapped against the SCA's five strategic agendas toward 2030 (environmental sustainability, operational efficiency, economic competitiveness, digital transformation, and human capital); the results show that the 2008–2025 traffic data provide quantitative justification primarily for the first three agendas, in particular revenue diversification beyond transit tolls and green incentives to win back the container segment. ]]>
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