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
In November, global on-time performance improved to 50%, a 2.2% increase from October. This marked the first time reliability exceeded 50% since May.
Additionally, seaexplorer data showed that the global average arrival delay for both LATE and ALL vessels decreased in November, reaching the lowest levels recorded this year.
Trade performance development was positive for eight of the eleven major trades.
Notably, Asia↔Oceania and North America↔South America recorded double-digit gains, recording 54.4% and 48.5% reliability respectively.
A year after the Houthi attacks and subsequent diversions around Africa began, the Asia↔North Europe trade showed steady gains, reaching 57.5% in November, making it the best-performing trade overall.
Blank sailing data revealed that 5 sailings were blanked on the Asia→North Europe route, accounting for 7.5% of total capacity.
On the Asia→North America route, carriers announced 25 blanked sailings (10.1% of total capacity), with 11 to the East Coast and 14 to the West Coast.
The Transatlantic westbound route saw 5 blanked sailings, representing 8.7% of total capacity.
Global On-Time Performance
Global on-time performance reached 50% in November, recovering from a decline below this level in June.
As shown in the figure below, overall reliability improved by 2.2% compared to October.
In addition, comparing year-on-year, the gap between November 2023 and 2024 performances is smaller than in previous months due to the sharp decline in November 2023.
The global monthly average arrival delay of LATE vessels reflects the improvement in reliability, decreasing by 0.3 days to 3.7 days in November.
This was not only the lowest level recorded for the year but also in line with October 2023.
In November, the average arrival delay for ALL vessels also improved, decreasing by 0.3 days to 1.7 days.
This marks the lowest figure recorded for ALL vessels in 2024 thus far.
Reliability per Trade
The overall improvement in on-time performance was observed on eight of the 11 trades.
Notably, Asia↔Oceania and North America↔South America recorded double-digit gains in November, reaching 54.4% and 48.5%, respectively.
However, sailings between Asia↔North Europe were the most reliable, increasing by 3.9 percentage points compared to October.
Additionally, performance on North America↔North Europe improved by 3.5 percentage points, while Asia↔North America saw a slight decline of 1.2 percentage points.
Reliability on Asia↔North Europe
This month, we take a closer look at the performance of the most reliable trade in November.
As shown in the figure above, Asia↔North Europe's overall performance improved by 3.9% to 57.5% in November.
On the westbound leg, November saw strong vessel performance, significantly contributing to the trade's overall gains.
As shown in the image below, reliability increased by 11.8 percentage points to 50.6%, the highest level for the year thus far. This level surpasses November 2023, when carriers began diverting vessels around the Cape of Good Hope.
LATE ships sailing on this leg had a monthly average delay in vessel arrival of 3.5 days, while ALL vessels arrived on average 1.8 days later than scheduled.
On the eastbound leg, reliability remained stable around the 60% mark.
The marginal increase of 0.9 percentage points made November the best-performing month so far.
However, compared to November 2023, reliability was still 11 percentage points lower.
LATE vessels sailing back to Asia were delayed an average of 3.8 days on arrival, while ALL vessels recorded a 1.6-day delay.
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 ""chedule 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 ""ntra Trade"" ervices (e.g. Intra-Asia, Intra-Europe), are currently out of scope.
A PDF version of this report can be found here.
