Container line schedule reliability dropped again in April following an encouraging increase in global schedule reliability in March, according to Sea-Intelligence.
The maritime analyst said in its latest Global Liner Performance (GLP) report that global container line schedule reliability "levelled out," in April with carriers recording a 1.0 percentage point month-on-month decrease in global schedule, reaching 39.2%. In March, it saw a 5.8 percentage point improvement over February reaching 40.4%.
Lowest April schedule reliability on record
"The road to return to 'normal' global schedule reliability levels from previous has proven to be bumpy still," said Alan Murphy, CEO of Sea-Intelligence.
"April 2021 continues the unfortunate trend of previous months and shows the lowest schedule reliability for any April on record in the 10 years that we have measured schedule reliability, with the gap to 2020 a sharp -30.6 percentage points," he added.
The report noted, however, that the average delay for late vessel arrivals, continued its decreasing trend, with the April 2021 figure 0.59 days lower month/month, and albeit still being higher by 0.61 days year/year.
It added that it is also showing the highest for any April at 5.68 days, the gap year/year is closing compared to previous months in 2021.
Maersk most reliable liner in April 2021
Meanwhile, the maritime analyst named Maersk Line as the most reliable top-14 carrier in April 2021, with schedule reliability of 46.5%, followed by Hamburg Süd with 42.4%. Both liners were also the most reliable in March.
Sea-Intelligence noted that for the month, no other carrier had schedule reliability higher than 40%.
It said the remaining carriers were within 30%-40%, apart from OOCL (29.1%), Evergreen (28.3%) and Yang Ming (27.6%).
"All carriers (with the exception of ONE and HMM), recorded a month/month decrease in schedule reliability, while none recorded a year/year improvement in April 2021," Murphy said.
"ONE recorded the largest month/month improvement of 1.1 percentage points while Evergreen recorded the largest year/year decline of a staggering -47.5 percentage points," he added.
