After plummeting to all-time lows earlier this year, April saw a lower-than-expected decline in global schedule reliability, according to maritime consultancy SeaIntelligence.
Shipping line schedules were 0.4 percentage points less reliable M/M in April 2020 at 69.8%, which was the second-lowest April figure in the 2012-2020 period. Compared to April 2019, schedule reliability was down 6.7 percentage points.
“As the blank sailings impact of coronavirus only went truly pandemic in April, we were expecting a significant decline in schedule reliability from March to April,” said SeaIntelligence CEO Alan Murphy. “However, this has not (yet) happened.
“Although a significant number of sailings were blanked in April, it seems quite possible that carriers have managed to adjust their schedules to handle the blank sailings by implementing sufficient buffers in their schedules. If this is the case, we may see reliability remain around 70% for the duration of the pandemic, and maybe even improve. However, if we see a sharp recovery, the increase in volumes could negatively impact reliability.”
There’s been a slight reshuffle in the reliability ranks. While Hamburg Süd maintained its lead as the most reliable top-15 carrier in April with a figure of 80.3%, Wan Hai recorded 76.2% – unseating Maersk and coming in second.
All three THE Alliance carriers were in the bottom three, with Yang Ming recording the lowest score of 65.1%. Nine recorded a M/M improvement in April, with Evergreen the largest at 5.7 percentage points, while HMM recorded the largest M/M decrease of 3.2 percentage points. None of the top-15 carriers recorded a Y/Y improvement, with Wan Hai recording a double-digit Y/Y decline of 10.3 percentage points.
