“This is a very positive development as schedule reliability has declined for five consecutive months, from March to July this year, but has now improved for the past two months since we reached the bottom in July,” Alan Murphy, chief operating officer and partner at SeaIntel Maritime Analysis, said in announcing the results.
The improvement also was seen in the delivery of individual containers to their destinations, which SeaIntel tracks in partnership with INTTRA. The global on-time delivery of containers improved to 65.7 percent for the month, up 2.2 percentage points from 63.5 percent in August.
Maersk Line and Hamburg Süd retained the top spots in the global performance ranking for the third consecutive month, with a global schedule reliability of 89.3 percent and 84.4 percent, respectively. Yang Ming was the third most reliable carrier in September, with ships arriving on schedule 83.9 percent of the time.
Carriers improved reliability in two out of three large head-haul trade lanes from Asia month-over-month in September, according to the report. The trans-Pacific and Asia-to-Mediterranean routes improved scheduled reliability by 2 percent and 4 percent, respectively, while the Asia-to-North Europe trade lane witnessed a 2 percent decline in performance.
Notably, the results from Drewry Maritime Research’s recently published Carrier Performance Insight report conflict with SeaIntel’s conclusions. Drewry found that ship and container reliability in the third quarter of 2013 to be "disappointing.”
