As maritime research puts figures to the impact of Covid-19 on shipping schedule reliability in the first quarter of this year, it’s not a pretty picture.
At 67.9% it represents the second-lowest percentage achieved by shipping lines since 2012 when consultancy Sea-Intelligence introduced the barometer. It's only 1.5 percentage points higher than the lowest recorded figure of 66.4% in 2018.
CEO Alan Murphy said this declining trend, which started in 2019-Q3, meant that there had now been a decline in three consecutive quarters for the first time since the 2013-Q1 to 2014-Q1 period.
The global average delay for late vessel arrivals was the highest in any quarter outside of 2015-Q1, which was due to the US West Coast labour dispute, he added.
In Q4 of 2019, Hamburg Süd overtook Wan Hai as the most reliable carrier and consolidated its position in 2020‑Q1 with a figure of 78.2%. Wan Hai followed with 75.7% while Yang Ming was the least reliable at 59.7%. Yang Ming has now been the lowest ranked in each quarter since 2017-Q3.
None of the top-15 carriers recorded any improvement, with 10 of the 15 recording double-digit declines.
Hamburg Süd and HMM recorded the smallest at -8.9 percentage points, while OOCL recorded the largest at -14.1 percentage points.
