Container line schedule reliability improved in March which Sea-Intelligence said in its new report is the "highest" seen this year.

The improvement came after schedule reliability recorded an improvement in February which Sea-Intel said was the first significant month-on-month improvement since 2020.

"Global schedule reliability continues to slowly creep upwards, recording a marginal M/M improvement yet again, with the March 2022 figure reaching 35.9%," said Alan Murphy, CEO, Sea-Intelligence.

Nonetheless, despite being the highest 2022 reliability figure so far, Murphy noted that the March 2022 score is still slightly below the 2021 level.

Meanwhile, the average delay for late vessel arrivals decreased once again, this time by -0.32 days to 7.26 days in March 2022.

Sea-Intel said in its latest report that despite the improvement, the average delay figure has now been over 7 days since August 2021 and continues to be the highest across each month when compared historically.

Maersk's most reliable liner in March

Just like in February, Maersk emerged as the most reliable top-14 carrier in March according to the Sea-Intel report with a schedule reliability of 50.3% making it the only carrier with a score of over 50%, followed by Hamburg Süd with 45.9%.

It said there were seven carriers with schedule reliability of 30%-40% and five with schedule reliability of 20%-30%.

"In March 2022, a lot of the carriers were very close to each other in terms of schedule reliability, with 10 carriers within 8 percentage points of each other," Sea-Intel add, noting that for the month, Wan Hai had the lowest schedule reliability in March 2022 at 22.6%.

It added that on a Y/Y level, only 3 of the top-14 carriers recorded an improvement in schedule reliability in March 2022, with the largest improvement of just 1.6 percentage points.