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 schedule reliability improved to 48.1% in April, an improvement of 1.1 percentage points month-on-month and 3.9 percentage points year-on-year.

The average arrival delay of LATE vessels rose to 4.6 days, while the delay for ALL vessels remained stable at 2.1 days.

A look at the main trades reveals positive developments across various routes.

The Mediterranean/Black Sea↔South America route was the top performer in April, being the only trade to surpass the 70% reliability mark.

Additionally, nine of the eleven trades saw year-on-year improvements in reliability.

Blank sailing data (weeks 14-18) recorded four void sailings on Asia→North Europe, accounting for 4.2% of total capacity.

For the Asia→North America route, carriers announced 42 blanked sailings, accounting for 15.4% of total capacity, with 10 to the East Coast and 32 to the West Coast.

The Transatlantic westbound route recorded three blank sailings to the US East Coast, representing 3% of total capacity, with no blank sailings to the West Coast in April.

Global On-Time Performance

In April, global on-time performance reached 48.1%, reflecting a steady upward trend. It rose 1.1 percentage points from the previous month and 3.9 percentage points compared to the same period last year.

Despite no change in March, reliability has increased by 3.6 percentage points since the start of 2025.

However, performance has been dampened by port congestion in Northern Europe, South America, China and key transhipment hubs such as Port Klang and Singapore.

LATE vessels experienced notable delays in April, arriving an average of 4.6 days behind schedule.

This marks a variation of 0.4 days compared to March and is 0.2 days longer than in April 2024.

A comparable upward trend for ALL vessels was recorded, though to a smaller degree.

In April, the average arrival delay for ALL vessels rose by a mere 0.1 days, reaching 2.1 days month-on-month.

When comparing year-on-year, the delays this April were lower than those recorded in the previous year. 

Reliability per Trade Lane

An analysis of the 11 major trades reveals that most recorded a positive trend.

Eight trades demonstrated an increase in reliability month-on-month, ranging from 0.1 to 10 percentage points.

Although recording the largest improvement last month (10.2 percentage points), Mediterranean/Black Sea↔North Europe was the least reliable trade.

Conversely, Mediterranean/Black Sea↔South America recorded a marginal improvement but was the best-performing trade in April. In addition, it was the only trade to exceed 70% reliability.

On another positive note, nine of the 11 trades showed year-on-year reliability improvements, with increases ranging from 1.3% to 21.1 percentage points.

Notably, Asia↔Oceania, Mediterranean/Black Sea↔North America, and Mediterranean/Black Sea↔South America recorded double-digit improvements.

Reliability on North Europe ↔ South America

Southbound

As shown in the table above, trade between Northern Europe and South America was the second most reliable in April.

This route exhibited steady growth throughout 2025, continuing a trend that began in October of the prior year.

In the southbound direction, reliability increased by over eight percentage points, reaching 81.3% in April.

This marks the highest level of reliability observed since August 2023.

In April, LATE vessels had an average delay of 4.7 days, while ALL vessels experienced a one-day delay.

Northbound

While the northbound leg performed significantly lower than the southbound leg, reliability has steadily improved since January.

In the previous month, performance improved slightly by 1.8 percentage points, reaching 46%.

The figure below illustrates that the reliability for 2025 has not yet exceeded that of the last two years.

Last month, the average arrival delays for LATE and ALL vessels showed significant improvement, decreasing to 3.4 days and 1.9 days, respectively.

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.

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