Global shipping schedule reliability continued to bounce with March figures showing another month-on-month increase, this time of 2.4 percentage points, reaching 62.6%, and bringing it almost in line with the 2020 figure for the same month.

Sea-Intelligence said in issue 140 of its Global Liner Performance (GLP) report, that on a year-on-year (Y/Y) level, schedule reliability was a staggering 26.8 percentage points higher. 

The average delay for LATE vessel arrivals also continued to decrease, dropping by -0.26 days month-on-month (M/M) in March 2023 to 5.03 days.

Sea-Intelligence said it is now only marginally higher than at the same point in 2020, and a significant -2.41 days lower Y/Y.

Top 14 carriers record increased schedule reliability

The report noted that Maersk was the most reliable top-14 carrier with schedule reliability of 68.6%, followed by MSC with 67.7%. Sea Intelligence said five more carriers had schedule reliability of over 60%.

"The remaining carriers all had schedule reliability of 50%-60% and were quite close to each other," the report said, adding that Yang Ming was the least reliable carrier with a schedule reliability of 53.4%.

"13 of the top-14 carriers recorded an M/M improvement in schedule reliability in March 2023, with ZIM recording the largest improvement of 7.1 percentage points," Sea-Intel added.

It also said that HMM was the only carrier with a M/M decline in schedule reliability, of -0.1 percentage points. On a Y/Y level, all 14 carriers recorded double-digit improvements.