Is the shipping industry encountering a black swan event?

The first half of 2020 was undoubtedly exceptional: the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic completely disrupted the economy and society, everywhere in the world. This extraordinary situation impacted on several industries, causing a dramatic effect in terms of both reduced incomes and on the capability to spend for many communities around the world. This double impact of the pandemic generated a remarkable domino effect on the transport industry, with airline business almost zeroed, many further restrictions for all other transport solutions and a contraction of the overall demand for transport that will probably last for all 2021. This situation generated both short term (e.g., re-routing) and long term (e.g., capacity issues, new regulations) effects with unclear impacts on the profitability of certain businesses (e.g. container shipping recorded an increase in revenues due to the adaptation of most companies to the new situation). The paper focuses on the liner shipping industry and, with the help of the available data, looks back at how the industry experienced the first six months of the Covid era and on that basis reflects on what the medium to long term repercussions for the industry may be.