In the recently released January 2024 Global Liner Performance report, a comprehensive analysis of the 2023-FY schedule reliability was conducted, revealing notable improvements, according to Sea-Intelligence. The annual global schedule reliability increased by 19.5 percentage points, rising from 42.6% to 62.1% in 2023. Despite this positive trend, it only reached the levels observed in 2020 and remains below the 70%-80% range seen in 2012-2019.
Concerns arise as schedule reliability experienced a month-on-month decline throughout Q4, a trend likely to continue into January 2024 due to the impact of the Red Sea Crisis. However, this is expected to be a temporary setback, and once carriers adjust their schedules to accommodate additional transit time, an improvement in schedule reliability is anticipated. Notably, the crisis had a limited impact on average delays, which decreased from 6.38 to 4.83 days in 2023-FY.
Among global carriers, Maersk emerged as the most reliable in 2023-FY, boasting a schedule reliability of 67.7%. Other carriers with notable reliability include MSC (65.9%), CMA CGM (62.8%), Evergreen (61.9%), and Wan Hai (61.3%). All 13 global carriers achieved double-digit year-on-year improvements, with Wan Hai leading the pack with a significant improvement of 27.4 percentage points.
Examining alliances, 2M stood out as the most reliable at 57.8%, followed by Ocean Alliance (55.3%) and THE Alliance (43.1%). While all alliances recorded double-digit year-on-year improvements, only 2M surpassed the industry average on the six major East/West trade routes.
Among these trade lanes, Asia-Mediterranean was the only one to outperform the industry average in schedule reliability for 2023-FY.
