October sees fall in global container shipping schedule reliability

With a portfolio of international ocean freight forwarding and logistics services, we note that global container shipping schedule reliability declined in October after months of steady improvement.

This is according to a new a new Sea-Intelligence analysis, and is likely due to increased vessel delays and operational volatility after several months of stability.

In October, global industry schedule reliability declined month-on-month (M/M) by 3.5 percentage points to 61.4% from the 6.5% recorded in September 2025.

Sea-Intelligence noted that this is only the second major M/M decline in 2025 and comes after three consecutive months of stable global schedule reliability.

On a year-on-year (Y/Y) level, schedule reliability was up 11.1 percentage points.

Sea-Intelligence’s Global Liner Performance (GLP) report, covers schedule reliability across 34 different trade lanes and 60+ carriers.

In October, the average delay for late vessel arrivals increased M/M by 0.04 days to 4.98 days. On a Y/Y level though, the October 2025 figure was -0.87 days lower. 

During the month, Maersk was the most reliable top-13 carrier with schedule reliability of 74.1%, followed by Hapag-Lloyd, and MSC with 69.6% and 65.9%, respectively.

The analysis noted that 9 of the remaining 10 carriers were in the 50-60% range. Meanwhile, PIL was the least reliable carrier in October 2025 with schedule reliability of 44.9%.

For more information about Davies Turner’s ocean freight forwarding and logistics services, please contact ocean@daviesturner.co.uk or visit the relevant pages of this website.

U-Freight’s ocean freight teams continually monitor and highlight issues with schedule reliability, cancelled sailings, long dwell times and port congestion to inform our clients on current issues. 

For more information about our ocean freight forwarding and logistics services, please visit the relevant pages of this website, or contact your local office, which can be seen here: https://ufreight.com/locations