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

Seaexplorer data reveals global on-time performance improved to 47% last month, a marginally better performance than last February.

In addition, the average arrival delay of LATE vessels increased to 4.3 days, rising to levels seen in 2022/2023. On the other hand, the arrival delay of ALL vessels slightly improved to 2.1 days.

On a trade level, seaexplorer data shows a wide range in performance from 31.8 to 69.1%. Notably, Asia↔South America saw a double-digit improvement, climbing to 61.9%.

A year-on-year comparison reveals that all Asian trades had better performances in February 2025 than in February 2024.

Blank sailing data (weeks 6-9) recorded 19 void sailings on Asia→North Europe, accounting for 38.3% of total capacity.

On Asia→North America, carriers announced 42 blanked sailings (18.5% of total capacity), with 16 to the East Coast and 26 to the West Coast.

For the Transatlantic westbound route, 9 blanked sailings were logged, representing 16% of total capacity, of which 8 were to the East Coast.

Global On-Time Performance

Global on-time performance improved by 2.5 percentage points to 47% last month.

February marked the start of new service offerings by the Gemini Cooperation and MSC. Additionally, unprecedented extreme weather in the US, along with strikes and congestion in Northern Europe, caused significant delays.

In South America, ports faced weather delays, port infrastructure issues, and congestion.

Despite these challenges, reliability appears to be on an upward trend.

For the year-on-year comparison, Figure (1) shows a 1.2 percentage point improvement.

While this appears positive, January and February 2024 were the initial months of the Red Sea diversions and uncertainty surrounding the Houthi attacks.

Although routings around the Cape of Good Hope have normalised, reliability is significantly lower than in 2023, the year post-Covid and pre-Red Sea diversions.

As shown in Figure (2), the global monthly average arrival delay of LATE vessels increased by 0.2 days to 4.3 days in February.

This delay is higher than that recorded a year ago but was similar to levels in 2022 and 2023.

In contrast to LATE vessels, the average delay of ALL vessels has improved marginally to 2.1 days in February.

Nevertheless, the delays in January and February are higher than those recorded for 2023 and in 11 out of the 12 months of 2024.

Reliability per Trade Lane

As shown in the figure below, February’s performance ranged between 31.8% and 69.1% across 11 major trade lanes.

Seven of these trades improved their month-on-month performance, albeit to varying extents.

Asia↔Mediterranean/Black Sea, Asia↔North Europe, and North America↔North Europe increased their reliability between 6.5 and 8 percentage points.

On the other hand, the Mediterranean/Black Sea ↔North America, North America↔South America and North Europe↔ South America noted increases of less than 5 percentage points.

Asia↔South America was the only trade to record a double-digit improvement.

A year-on-year comparison reveals that all Asian trades recorded better performances in February 2025 than in February 2024,

Reliability on Asia↔North Europe

Westbound

Due to its improved month-on-month and year-on-year performance, we will examine the Asia↔North Europe trade more closely.

As illustrated by Figure (4), performance on the westbound declined by 3.9 percentage points last month to 22.9%. This is the lowest figure recorded since April 2022.

A year-on-year comparison reveals a difference of 11.5 percentage points.

The average arrival delay for LATE vessels on this leg rose from 5.1 days in January to 5.8 days in February. The last time delays were at this level was in November 2022.

For ALL vessels, the average delay increased month-on-month from 3.7 to 4.5 days, marking the highest figure recorded since seaexplorer began tracking.

Eastbound

In contrast to the westbound leg, the reliability of vessels sailing eastbound continues to climb. The on-time performance increased by 10.8 percentage points to 61.0% compared with January. 

As illustrated by Figure (5), this performance was 25.4 percentage points higher than the levels seen a year ago.

For LATE vessels sailing in this direction, the average arrival delay rose from 3.3 days in January to 3.7 days.

However, a decline was recorded for ALL vessels, dropping from 1.8 days to 1.5 days.

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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