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Global reliability for shipping lines tumbled for the fourth month in September, falling to 27% on-time from 29% in August, while vessel delay increased to an average of six days, according to the Xeneta Schedule Reliability Scorecard
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Extreme weather conditions in recent months continue to impact Asia, the largest trading region
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Rates are skyrocketing due to a confluence of bunker costs, ongoing typhoon disruption, and a strong peak season
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Every carrier posted its highest average delay over the past 12 months in September
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Congestion in China, which has the two busiest ports in the world, is spilling over into Singapore, southeast Asia’s transshipment hub
Global reliability for shipping lines tumbled for the fourth month in September, falling to 27% on-time from 29% in August, while vessel delay increased to an average of six days across all arrivals, according to the Xeneta Schedule Reliability Scorecard for September 2026.
Stability is not expected to happen in October as extreme weather conditions in recent months continue to impact Asia, the largest trading region, the market intelligence and benchmarking platform said.
“There is little prospect of hitting a firm floor in October given continued deterioration on Asian trades following a sequence of powerful typhoons that landed from July through early September,” writes Destine Ozuygur, Xeneta senior market analyst for liner networks.
“The compound effect of typhoons on existing constraints insists that the right combination of circumstances can continue to eat away at global reliability months after the fact and far from the original localization,” she noted.
Asia-linked trades are at 12-month lows of on-time arrivals and 12-month highs on average delay. The Far East to Europe dived to 4% on-time with 9.9 days of average delay across all vessels in September, the worst month since September 2021 when it hit 3% on-time.
Far East to North America was flat at 20% on-time while delay rose by 0.8 days from August to a total of 6.9 days in September.
Rates are skyrocketing
Rates are on the rise, with Xeneta’s spot market average for China to the United States West Coast reaching $7,717 per forty-foot equivalent unit (FEU) in early October, which is more than four times the rate in September 2025 at $1,778 and up 8% from the start of September 2026.
Long-term rates are catching up from a much lower base, at $3,649 per FEU on October 1 but rising +26% month on month.
No single factor is a main driver of the situation, Ozuygur said, but more of a confluence of bunker costs, ongoing typhoon disruption, and a strong peak season.
Every carrier posted its highest average delay over the past 12 months in September, but only four hit a 12-month low in on-time arrivals, namely: CMA CGM (30%), Cosco (18%), Hapag-Lloyd (45%) and Yang Ming (4%).
“The increased risk lies in severity rather than the frequency of late arrivals. Buffer days in contracts and inventory plans are being consumed at an alarming rate, and the ongoing deterioration means any contingency plans set in motion today may not hold up when your next booking arrives,” Ozuygur said.
China ports’ congestion spills over to Singapore
At ports, congestion in China, which has the two busiest ports in the world, is spilling over into Singapore, southeast Asia’s transshipment hub.
Southeast Asia saw 2.0 days of average vessel wait, edging past the Middle East, with the share of vessels waiting increasing up to 23%. Vessel queues in Singapore nearly doubled from 12 to 22 vessels per day at 29% and average wait spiked from 1.9 to 3.1 days as it continued to absorb downstream effects from Chinese port congestion.
Africa was still worse with average vessel wait times in ports falling by nearly a full day to 2.5 days in September, and the share of vessels waiting held at 32%. Apart from a modest 0.1-day dip in Northern Europe, Africa was the only region to improve.
The Middle East held flat across both vessel wait times at 1.9 days and the share of vessels waiting at 26%.
In Northeast Asia, just under a third of vessels at port were waiting in September at 30%, and average wait rose by 0.3 days to 1.6 days total.
Queues remain long at Chinese ports, and they show up as increasingly severe berth-arrival delays for shippers in North America and Europe. However, Shanghai was an exception, where the queue shortened from 101 to 86 vessels at anchorage on an average day and wait lengthened from 1.9 to
2.7 days.
READ: Congestion persists at two busiest China ports, Manila – DHL report
Looking ahead, Ozuygur said “Chinese anchorages are clearing, but the disruption is moving downstream, not disappearing.”
Amid the continuing port congestion and high rates, she underscored that other factors are at play.
“Shippers shouldn’t let narratives around port congestion take attention away from carrier accountability. Schedule reliability, port rotations and unscheduled calls, and how much capacity is deliberately cut, shape the price and downstream cost of a booking just as much as port
performance,” she said.
READ: Global air freight rates stay high as demand rises 6% in Aug – Xeneta
