High standards prevail

Tuesday, 09 June 2009

THE improvement in timekeeping in the US South Atlantic, Gulf and Pacific coast trades over the past year has been remarkable, and the overall standard in this year’s survey window was very high indeed.
 This is all the more impressive for having been achieved over a period that can be very challenging, as it includes the early part of the winter, when stormy weather can create severe difficulties.

Only one operation showed any real deterioration, but even here, performance was very reasonable, and it only dropped to a mid-table position. This loop was Evergreen’s NUE, which suffered from the replacement of the ‘D’ class ships with slower ‘R’ class units – but as Evergreen has since added a week to the round-voyage time, this will most likely have been a temporary problem.

In the lower part of the table, the Grand Alliance lines (Hapag-Lloyd, OOCL and NYK) have still not managed to get the PAX pendulum into a smooth rhythm. On four sailings, arrivals at our base ports were three or more days behind schedule, while Thamesport was skipped on a similar number to make up time.

The Grand Alliance and Zim also occupied a disappointing slot with their jointly-run ATX, despite the first nine sailings all arriving at Savannah on the scheduled day. The recorded maximum of eight days late applies to a ship that was moved to the following schedule position as one week’s sailing was omitted in the quiet Christmas/New Year holiday period, and this helped to get it back on track.

The oddest result in the table is for MSC, which had a 100% record at Charleston, but the poorest one at Houston. This discrepancy stems from its published schedule, which allows a very generous number of days to Charleston – ships averaged just 12 days from Felixstowe to the South Carolina port, compared with a scheduled 15, but one day longer than scheduled to Houston.

Nevertheless, the Charleston result propelled MSC to the top spot for schedule reliability in the US South Atlantic sector, leaving an unlucky Maersk Line in second place.

Also impressive here were Hamburg Süd, whose Trident operation was hit by one ship being held up at Savannah in the week after Christmas, and the New World Alliance APX pendulum,

Maersk was also pushed into second position on both the US Gulf and Pacific coast routes. In the first case, the Grand Alliance lines took the crown, thanks mainly to their GAX loop, as their GMX was marginally behind Maersk’s TA2.

Houston can pose a problem with fog occasionally affecting the Houston Ship Canal, and hurricanes always a threat in the relevant season. The port was closed in September for a while due to Hurricane Ike, but fortunately for Liner Analysis, this did not fall inside the survey window.

On the west coast route, the New World Alliance lines provided the most punctual operation in the APX, which won fairly comfortably over Maersk’s TA3 pendulum.

The three New World Alliance partners – APL, HMM and MOL – made it a double to the Pacific coast with the APX, which is easily the fastest direct service from the UK to Los Angeles. Their policy of making Felixstowe last European loading port was a major factor here. 

The APX was also fastest from the UK to the South Atlantic base-port pairing of Charleston and Savannah, with its calls at Charleston, although the port was by-passed on one sailing in early September. The second-quickest was the Grand Alliance GAX loop, from Thamesport.

Finally, transit times from the UK to Houston were a straight fight between the Grand Alliance GAX and Maersk’s TA2, with the former squeezing in at the top due to the fact that the latter omitted three calls at Felixstowe to keep ships on schedule.