SIMIC

The improvement came despite a slight decline in overall global on-time performance, reports IHS Media.

Vessels arrived on time at US West Coast ports for 22.2 per cent of sailings during April, up from 13.8 per cent in March.

Schedule reliability to the US East Coast rose to 19.7 per cent from 10.1 per cent, the first monthly gain in reliability for East Coast ports since June 2020, according to the latest figures from Sea-Intelligence Maritime Analysis.

Those improvements were offset, however, by declines in other trade lanes, including Asia-Europe, which contributed to an overall drop in global on-time performance from 40.3 per cent in March to 39.2 per cent in April.

Sea-Intelligence, which tracks vessel on-time performance each month in its Global Liner Performance Report, noted that April was somewhat of a disappointment on a global level.

"As schedule reliability improved in March 2021, we expected the worst to have passed. However, schedule reliability declined again in April 2021," it said.

Nevertheless, the slight improvement in vessel schedule reliability in the Asia-US trades in April is significant because declining on-time performance earlier this year was a key factor contributing to port congestion on the US West and East coasts.

US ports have struggled to handle record or near-record imports from Asia for 10 consecutive months since last July.

Despite the sequential improvement, carriers' schedule reliability to both coasts last month still leaves a lot to be desired. Sea-Intelligence Maritime Analysis noted that average on-time performance to the West Coast in March and April was a "massive" 49 percentage points lower than the 71.2 per cent on-time performance in the same 2020 period. Vessel on-time performance to the East Coast was 47.5 percentage points lower than the 67.2 per cent recorded in March/April 2020.

Carriers in the eastbound trans-Pacific also made progress in reducing the number of days vessels arrived late at US ports. This metric is important because vessels this year have been thrown off schedule to such a degree due to port congestion that carriers have instituted 121 "structural" blank sailings from Asia to the West Coast and 21 structural blank sailings to the East Coast since January 1, according to Sea-Intelligence.

For those vessels that arrived late to the West Coast in April, the average delay declined 2.1 days from March to 10.37 days. The average delay for vessels on the East Coast in April declined 0.45 days from March to 6.7 days, according to the report. Normally, vessels arriving at US ports on both coasts proceed directly to berth.

In terms of the performance of the carrier alliances, the 2M Alliance of Maersk and Mediterranean Shipping was the most reliable to the West Coast, with 20 per cent of its vessels arriving on-time. THE Alliance of Ocean Network Express, Hapag-Lloyd, HMM, and Yang Ming Line had an on-time performance of 16.9 per cent, while the Ocean Alliance of CMA CGM/APL, Cosco, and Evergreen saw 13.4 per cent of its vessels arrive on time on the West Coast.

The 2M Alliance was also the most dependable to the East Coast at 28.2 per cent, followed by the Ocean Alliance at 18.3 per cent, and THE Alliance at 10.1 per cent.