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 was stable at 47.0% in March.

In addition, the average arrival delay of LATE vessels improved to 4.1 days, which is in line with last March’s levels.

Similarly, the arrival delay of ALL vessels improved to 2.0 days. However, this average is higher than that of the previous two years.

On a trade level, seaexplorer data shows a wide range in performance from 28.1% to 72.1%

Notably, North America↔North Europe saw the largest gains in March, improving by 14.2 percentage points to 46.2%.

A year-on-year comparison reveals that eight of the eleven trades performed lower in March 2025 than in March 2024.

Blank sailing data (weeks 10-13) recorded 11 void sailings on Asia→North Europe, accounting for 18.5% of total capacity.

On Asia→North America, carriers announced 23 blanked sailings (10.3% of total capacity), with eight to the East Coast and 15 to the West Coast.

For the Transatlantic westbound route, seven blanked sailings were logged, representing 8.9% of total capacity, of which six were to the East Coast.

Global On-Time Performance

Global on-time performance in March showed no improvement, measuring at 47.0%.

Schedule disruptions continued last month due to the alliance reshuffle, phasing in and out of vessels and ships arriving off-window.

Notably, congestion was significant on the US East Coast, in Northern Europe, in Northern China, and at several South American ports.

For the year-on-year comparison, Figure (1) shows a 4.2 percentage point difference.

As shown in Figure (2), the global monthly average arrival delay of LATE vessels improved by 0.2 days to 4.1 days in March.

This average is on par with March 2024

Similarly, the average arrival delay of ALL vessels has improved marginally to 2.0 days in March.

Nevertheless, the first quarter delays were higher than those recorded in the same period in 2023 and 2024.

Reliability per Trade Lane

As shown in the figure below, March’s performance ranged between 28.1% and 72.1% across 11 major trade lanes.

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

North America↔North Europe saw the largest gains in March, improving by 14.2 percentage points to 46.2%.

Notably, North America↔South America and North Europe↔South America recorded improvements of 12 and 12.6 percentage points, respectively.

In contrast, Asia ↔ Mediterranean/Black Sea noted the largest decline of 10.3 percentage points.

A year-on-year comparison reveals that eight of the eleven trades performed below their March 2024 reliability.

Reliability on North America↔North Europe

Westbound

North America↔North Europe recorded the highest gains last month. We will, therefore, take a closer look at the individual legs of this trade.

As illustrated by Figure (5), westbound performance sharply increased by 20.1 percentage points to reach 43.8% in March.

This is in line with the March 2024 performance but below that of March 2023.The average delay for LATE vessels on this leg improved significantly from 5 days in February to 3.8 days in March.

Similarly, the arrival delay for ALL vessels decreased month-on-month from 3.8 to 1.9 days, meeting 2023 levels.

On this leg, carriers blanked seven sailings (of which six were to the East Coast), representing 8.9% of total capacity,

Eastbound

Similar to the westbound leg, the reliability of vessels sailing eastbound continued to climb.

The on-time performance increased by 10.6 percentage points month-on-month to reach 47.8%.

As illustrated by Figure (7), despite the notable gains in Q1, 2025 remains significantly low in comparison to 2023 and 2024.

For LATE vessels sailing in this direction, the average arrival delay rose from 4.5 days in February to 4.6 days last month.

However, a decline was recorded for ALL vessels, dropping from 2.5 to 2.2 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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