In April, the global reliability of liner shipping reached its highest level of the year so far. The services of the shipping companies Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd lead the ranking.
Liner services in the shipping industry have recently become more punctual again. In a monthly comparison, global reliability rose by 0.4 percentage points to currently 62.4%. In a year-on-year comparison, punctuality even increased by a total of 4 percentage points. This is the result of an analysis by the industry service Sea-Intelligence. In a comprehensive report, the company examined a total of 34 different trade routes and more than 60 shipping companies offering liner services.
With the improvement in schedule reliability, the average delay for ships arriving late has also decreased. It fell by 0.27 days month-on-month to 5.34 days. Nevertheless, this figure was 0.31 days higher year-on-year than in April 2025.
Among the 13 largest liner shipping companies, the Danish company Maersk achieved the highest reliability of 76.1%. Gemini partner Hapag-Lloyd from Hamburg followed close behind in second place with 75.1%. Five shipping companies each scored between 60% and 70% and between 50% and 60%. Bringing up the rear among the major shipping companies is Wan Hai: the Taiwanese company (approx. 600,000 TEU and 1.8% market share) achieved a schedule adherence rate of just 39.6% in April.
“Five shipping companies recorded an improvement in their schedule reliability in April 2026 in a monthly comparison, while 11 of the 13 shipping companies achieved an improvement in a year-on-year comparison,” Sea-Intelligence reported.
The Gemini cooperation – consisting of Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd – recorded a reliability of 85% for all calls and 85.6% for arrivals on trade routes. While Sea-Intelligence did not publish a direct correlation, it is clear from the figures that Gemini’s “hub and spoke” concept and the associated promise of on-time ships appears to be working.
Market leader MSC, the world’s largest liner shipping company with a market share of 21.6%, achieved a punctuality rate of 73.4% and 72.3% respectively. The Premier Alliance – ONE, HMM and Yang Ming – achieved scores of 54.2% for both all and trade routes.
For the “old” alliances, the values for “all arrivals” in the Sea-Intelligence analysis continue to correspond to those for arrivals on the “trade routes”. The Ocean Alliance, consisting of CMA CGM, Cosco, Evergreen and OOCL, achieved a punctuality rate of 67.6%.
