by Manal Barakat, 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 dropped 3.4 percentage points to 46.0% in July.
Trade performance decreased on eight of the 11 major trades.
The largest drop was on the North America↔South America trade, which decreased by 11.5 percentage points to 56.4%.
In contrast, on-time performance on the Asia↔North Europe trade improved month-on-month by 8.1 percentage points to 43.0%.
Blank sailing data covering July (weeks 27 to 31) shows that carries blanked nearly 4% of the total offered capacity on the westbound leg of the Asia-North Europe trade.
On the eastbound of the Transpacific, carriers announced 14 blanked sailings during that period, representing around 5.4% of the total capacity offered.
On the Transatlantic, no blank sailings were recorded for July and the total offered capacity neared 367,000 TEU.
Global On-Time Performance
Seaexplorer data shows that July’s global on-time performance dropped slightly compared to the previous month.
The graph below reveals that schedule reliability reached 46.0%, dropping 3.4 percentage points from June.
Compared to July 2023, the month’s performance was 23.3 percentage points lower.
The drop in performance was not reflected in the monthly average arrival delay of LATE vessels.
In fact, the monthly average improved by 0.1 days to 3.9 days in comparison to June.
This means that the average has continued to show stability since May 2024.
The global monthly average also improved for ALL vessels. The average improved by 0.1 days month-on-month to reach 1.9 days.
Reliability per Trade
The percentages per trade lane fluctuated slightly, with some remaining stable and others marking significant changes.
On-time performance on the Asia↔North Europe trade improved by 8.1 percentage points to 43.0% from June’s 34.9%.
On the Transpacific, vessels had an on-time performance of 57.5%, which is a slight improvement from 56.6% in June.
In contrast, the reliability of vessels on the Transatlantic dropped by 6 percentage points month-on-month to 58.8%.
The trade with the highest drop was the North America↔South America trade, with -11.5 percentage points.
Meanwhile, the improvement in the Asia↔ North Europe trade was the highest among major trade lanes. 
Reliability on Asia ↔ North Europe
Given that Asia↔North Europe had the largest positive development, we examine the on-time performance of vessels on this route more closely.
On the westbound, we see the on-time performance increased by 5.2 percentage points to 41.3%.
As illustrated in the figure below, this is the highest percentage this trade lane has achieved since the beginning of the year.
ALL ships travelling on the westbound leg had a monthly average arrival delay of 1.7 days.
Contrary to the improvement in schedule reliability, seaexplorer data shows that this figure decreased by 0.6 days compared to June.
The increase was considerably higher on the eastbound leg of this route. Vessels travelling from North Europe to Asia improved their schedule reliability by 9.2 percentage points to reach 43.6%.
The monthly average arrival delay of ALL vessels on this leg had a slight month-on-month decrease from 2.6 days to 2.2 days in July.
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.
