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 declined to 44.5% in January, falling below last year’s levels.
In addition, the average arrival delay of LATE and ALL vessels increased to either match or exceed January 2024 delays.
On a trade level, seaexplorer data shows a wide range in performance from 24% to 70.4%.
Notably, North Europe↔North America recorded a double-digit decline in January and was the least reliable trade.
On a positive note, Mediterranean/Black Sea↔South America steadily improved for a third consecutive month, reaching 70.4%.
Blank sailing data (weeks 1-5) recorded 5 void sailings on Asia→North Europe, accounting for 3.4% of total capacity.
On Asia→North America, carriers announced 28 blanked sailings (9.4% of total capacity), with 10 to the East Coast and 18 to the West Coast.
The Transatlantic westbound route recorded 6 blanked sailings, representing 7.6% of total capacity.
Global On-Time Performance
Global on-time performance declined by 2.8 percentage points to 44.5% in January compared with December.
Figure (1) illustrates that this performance was lower than January 2024 by 2.6 percentage points.
The upcoming alliance reshuffle, the threat of strikes in the US, and winter weather disruptions have contributed to this low on-time performance.
As shown in Figure (2), the global monthly average arrival delay of LATE vessels in January was 4.1 days, matching the delay recorded a year ago.
On a month-on-month basis, the delays increased by 0.2 days compared to December 2024.
The global monthly arrival delay of ALL vessels increased from 1.9 days in December to 2.2 days in January.
On a year-on-year comparison, vessels were 0.2 days later in January 2025 compared to January 2024, when diversions around Africa began.
In 2025, alliance reshuffles and the phasing in of major east-west networks have increased the arrival delay of ALL vessels.
We expect reliability to be impacted until the new networks are fully phased in. For the Gemini network, this is forecast to be completed by early June.
Reliability per trade lane
As shown in the figure below, January performance ranged between 24% and 70.4% across the 11 major trade lanes.
Mediterranean/Black Sea↔South America was the best performer, achieving 70.4%.
In contrast, North Europe↔North America was the only trade to record a double-digit decline, making it the least reliable trade overall.
On the Asia routes, reliability on Asia↔Mediterranean/Black Sea and Asia↔North Europe improved in January, albeit to below 50%.
However, Asia↔North America recorded a month-on-month decline of more than 5 percentage points, dropping to 46.1%.
Asia↔Oceania and Asia↔South America were the second and third best-performing trades overall, with an on-time performance of around 52%.
Reliability on Asia↔North Europe
Eastbound
Taking a closer look at Asia↔North Europe, we see that headhaul reliability declined by 7.3 percentage points month-on-month to 24.9%.
As illustrated by Figure (4), this was the lowest January performance recorded in the last four years.
The average arrival delay for LATE vessels increased by 0.9 days month-on-month to 5.1 days.
For ALL vessels, the arrival delay increased by 0.9 days month-on-month to 3.7 days. On a year-on-year level, the increase was 0.7 days.
According to blank sailing data for weeks 1 to 5, there were 5 void sailings on the westbound leg.
Westbound
In contrast to the westbound leg, the reliability of vessels sailing eastbound improved in January.
The on-time performance increased by 5.8 percentage points to 50.2% compared with December 2024.
As illustrated by Figure (5), this performance was 7.2 percentage points higher than the levels seen a year ago.
For LATE vessels sailing in this direction, the average arrival delay improved from 3.9 days in December to 3.3 days.
An improvement was also recorded for ALL vessels in January, dropping from 2.3 days to 1.8 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.
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.
