Danish maritime data analysis company Sea-Intelligence has reported noticeable improvements across all metrics of schedule reliability and average delay on a global, carrier, carrier alliance, and trade lane level in the first quarter of 2023.
This continues a trend that we saw for most of 2022 as well, with the metrics now closer to the pre-pandemic levels than to the below-par service levels of the pandemic-impacted years.
On a global level, schedule reliability increased to 58.3%, translating to a 3.4% increase quarter on quarter, and a 24.9% improvement year on year.
In a similar vein, the average delay for all vessel arrivals improved to 1.70 days, dropping by 2.88 days year on year, while the average delay for late vessel arrivals improved to 5.23 days, a notable reduction of 2.43 days from the previous year’s levels.
Source: Sea-Intelligence.com, Sunday Spotlight, issue 613As for the top-14 shipping lines (shown in Figure 1), all of them recorded double-digit year on year improvements, with four of them recording improvements of over 30%. Maersk was the most reliable carrier in the first quarter of 2023 with schedule reliability of 63.6%, with MSC the only other carrier with schedule reliability higher than 60%.
Additionally, 11 of the 12 remaining shipping lines were within 50%-60%, with Yang Ming the only exception with a schedule reliability of 49.9%.
The three carrier alliances also recorded sharp Y/Y improvements in schedule reliability, although only 2M and Ocean Alliance outperformed the industry on the East/West alliance trades, but that too by under 2 percentage points. THE Alliance, on the other hand, underperformed the industry by a significant -12.1 percentage points.
Alan Murphy, CEO of Sea-Intelligence, commented, “All of the six major East/West trades recorded double-digit year-on-year improvements in schedule reliability, although all of them underperformed compared to the global industry average.”
