by Priya Radünzel, SeaNewsEditor
- As a leader in sea logistics, Kuehne+Nagel closely tracks and collects data on the movement of vessels, including actual arrivals and vessel delays.
- A summary of this analysis, based on neutral data, is published monthly in our Schedule Reliability Report, available on Sea News.
Executive Summary
Global on-time performance slipped slightly to 54.5% in August, a 0.7 percentage point decrease compared to July.
Despite this drop, the August 2025 performance was 7.2 percentage points higher than August 2024.
The average arrival delays for LATE vessels and ALL vessels deteriorated slightly to 4.0 days and 1.7 days, respectively.
At the trade level, four major trades, including North America↔North Europe and Asia↔North Europe, recorded gains in August.
The remaining trades saw declines ranging from -1.1 to -8.1 percentage points.
Blank sailing data (weeks 32-35) recorded three void sailings on Asia→North Europe, accounting for 4.7% of total capacity.
On Asia→North America, carriers announced 10 blanked sailings, accounting for 4.9% of total capacity, with four to the East Coast and six to the West Coast.
The Transatlantic westbound route recorded 3 blank sailings (2.7% of total capacity) to the East Coast.
Global On-Time Performance
In August, global schedule reliability declined by 0.7 percentage points month-on-month (MoM) to 54.5%.
Year-on-year (YoY) performance improved by 7.2 percentage points.
The average arrival delay of LATE vessels deteriorated overall, increasing by 0.2 days MoM to 4.0 days in August.
Compared to August 2024, last month’s average delay was 0.1 day higher.
For ALL vessels, the average arrival day rose by 0.1 days to 1.7 days, although this was still lower than the average in August 2024.
Reliability per Trade Lane
Trade lane reliability improved MoM on four of the 11 major trades, with gains ranging from 0.1 to 9.0 percentage points. The remaining trades saw declines between -1.1 and -8.1 percentage points.
Despite being the most reliable trade, North America↔South America experienced the largest decline, dropping 8.9 percentage points. However, YoY, it recorded the greatest improvements, rising 36.9 percentage points.
North America↔North Europe achieved the largest MoM gain of 9 percentage points, reaching 72.0%. Year-on-year, reliability increased by 6.4 percentage points..
Last month, the lowest performing trade was Asia↔South America, which fell 3.0 percentage points MoM to 44.5%.
Reliability on North America↔North Europe
This month, we will examine the trade between North America and Northern Europe, which experienced the largest month-to-month increase in August.
Overall reliability on this trade was 72.0%, increasing from 63.0% in July. On a YoY basis, this trade improved by 6.4 percentage points.
LATE vessels were 3.8 days delayed on average, and ALL vessels arrived 1.0 days later than scheduled.
Below we will look at the on-time performance of the individual legs.
Westbound
The figure below shows the on-time performance of the headhaul leg between North Europe and North America.
In 2025, performance rose sharply from January to May, reaching 71.4% before dipping to 68% in July. In August, the leg recovered 1.2 percentage points MoM, achieving 70.0%.
This gain secured a YoY improvement of 6.6 percentage points.
However, LATE vessels arrived in North America 3.6 days behind schedule, up from 2.9 days in July. For ALL vessels, average delays increased slightly to 0.9 days.
Eastbound
On the backhaul, on-time performance rose by 13.8 percentage points MoM to 73.5%.
YoY, this marks an improvement of 5.9 percentage points.
In August, LATE arriving vessels on this route were delayed by an average of 4 days, unchanged from the previous month.
Meanwhile, the average arrival delay of ALL vessels decreased from 1.3 days to 1.0 days MoM, the lowest recorded for this year and similar to the level of delays seen in 2024.
Methodology
Calculating the on-time performance
To calculate the on-time performance of a service, Kuehne+Nagel uses vessel schedules from carrier(s) offering that service. Only carrier schedules that match our quality criteria are used for the schedule reliability calculation.
As carriers update schedules constantly, they become more accurate the closer vessels get to a destination port. For this reason, we have implemented a "schedule freeze period" of 14 days prior to actual vessel arrival. In other words, we benchmark the actual arrival with what carriers last announced 14 days earlier. To identify the actual time of arrival, Kuehne+Nagel consumes AIS (Automatic Identification System) vessel data. All vessels which arrive within a +/- 24-hour window at the port of destination compared to the last announced arrival are considered to be on time. Port call omissions and blank sailings announced after the 14-day freeze are excluded from the calculation.
Assigning carrier services to multiple trade lanes
Many services operate on various trade lanes (e.g. a carrier service between Asia and North Europe also calls ports in the Middle East and or the Mediterranean), and therefore carrier services may be listed in multiple trade lanes.
Definition of trade lanes
There is no common standard for the definition of trade lanes. This means, depending on the source, you will find different trade lanes as well as different regions, countries and ports assigned to a trade lane. Kuehne+Nagel has defined its own way of mapping and has assigned ports to these trade lanes accordingly. On-time performances of vessels are captured in our reports on defined main trades, meaning trades moving large container volumes on vessels. Therefore, niche trades and services within one trade, called "Intra Trade" services (e.g. Intra-Asia, Intra-Europe), are currently out of scope.
A PDF version of this report can be found here.
