Asia-Europe capacity correction is not as strong as on Transpacific, according to Danish maritime data analysis company Sea-Intelligence, which reported that unlike on the Transpacific, where weekly scheduled capacity more than two weeks out (relative to the week of departure) was considerably higher than what was eventually deployed, there was no such trend on Asia-Europe.
On Asia-North Europe, scheduled capacity even four weeks out was reflective of the actual deployment, while on the other hand, on Asia-Mediterranean, carriers end up correcting upwards namely adding capacity, having scheduled much less.
In the following figure, we can see scheduled deployment on Asia-Europe for Week 7-9 2023, as they were at different points in time
“Actual here refers to the actual deployment, Week 0 refers to the scheduled deployment recorded in the same week as the week being measured i.e. scheduled capacity for Week 7 as recorded in Week 7 etc., -1 refers to the scheduled deployment one week prior to the week being measured i.e. scheduled capacity for Week 7 as recorded in Week 6, and so on,” explained the Danish analysts.
In the most-recent weeks, schedules that were only three, even four weeks out were somewhat reflective of the actual deployment, according to the report.
“If anything, the lines ended up adding more capacity,” pointed out Alan Murhpy, CEO of Sea-Intelligence.
Although schedules five or more weeks away had roughly 6-23% “extra” capacity, this was nowhere close to the capacity correction that was seen on the Transpacific, said the analysis.
For Week 7, capacity correction was on the higher end, whereas for Week 9 it was on the lower end i.e. there was higher capacity correction in Week 7.
“However, it seems as if carriers had corrected capacity too aggressively for Week 7 and ended up adding some of it back in the weeks leading up to the week of deployment,” commented Murphy.
Meanwhile, on Asia-Mediterranean, for these three weeks (Weeks 7-9), capacity correction was on the positive side i.e. capacity was added back instead of taken out.
