Sea-Intelligence reports that as of September 2025, global liner schedule reliability hit 65.2 %, marking only a marginal month-on-month improvement of 0.1 percentage points. On a year-on-year basis, reliability rose by 14.7 percentage points — yet the fleet-wide figure remains subdued for container shipping operations.
While the average delay for late vessel arrivals remained steady at 4.88 days, the variation between carriers is stark. Among the top-13 carriers, the highest reliability was recorded at 77.0 %, while one operator fell as low as 47.9 % for September.
To capture the evolving nature of alliance networks and routing patterns, Sea-Intelligence now reports two metrics: “All arrivals” (including origin region calls) and “Trade arrivals” (destination-only). For example, one carrier alliance scored 89.1 % on All arrivals and 86.4 % on Trade arrivals in August/September, compared with another alliance recording 58.2 % and 59.9 % respectively.
Despite the incremental improvement, the modest plateau suggests underlying pressure points persist — from complex network structures and port congestion to variable carrier performance. For stakeholders across global shipping, the message is clear: schedule reliability is firming, but remains far from the robust levels required for resilient supply-chain operations.
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Source: Sea-Intelligence
