Using blanks to offset delays: a reliability analysis of Premier Alliance's PS3
2025-01-30 08:46

Using blanks to offset delays: a reliability analysis of Premier Alliance's PS3

by Destine Ozuygur

This week we are diving into how carriers are managing schedule reliability issues on the Far East - West Coast North America trade as the long awaited alliance transitions commence. In the example below, we take a close look at a Premier Alliance service where HMM, ONE, and YML display the use of what our team calls 'strategic blanks'.

Blank sailings are best defined as officially lost capacity declared by the carrier: they are most simply the absence of a planned voyage. Let's say where there would normally be a sailing in Slot 2 departing the first call in a service's rotation, the carrier has instead announced a 'blank sailing'. This means that a weekly service like the PMR - PS3 with a sailing on Slot 1 that leaves Nhava Sheva on 23-01-2025, will not see another sailing depart Nhava Sheva until 06-02-2025 - leaving a one week blank in expected capacity.

A blank sailing differs from an omission in that it almost always encompasses a full service rotation, and is traditionally announced within a more generous timeframe with a month or of notice. A port omission on the other hand, can be specific to a single port call or multiple calls along a service rotation in no particular order. In many cases omissions are used as ad-hoc measures to avoid certain risks like strikes, inclement weather events, and adjustment for delays or congestion. They can be announced well ahead of time, or even the same day.

While the announcement of blank sailings are most commonly associated with long-lasting work stoppages, management of persistent vessel and equipment shortages, or multi-national holidays like the Lunar New Year, they can also be employed strategically to offset delays. Despite best laid plans, carriers in both Gemini Cooperation and the Premier Alliance are scrambling to manage reliability issues incurred by extremely delayed voyages on the old services transitioning out at the same time as the arrival of new network structures.

The PMR - PS3 pendulum service is the first of its peers to have commenced on 23-01-2025 with the sailing of CONTI CONQUEST, bound for Los Angeles with an ETA of March 3rd. Despite the confident head start, the service already has a strategic blank slated for Slot 2 and a TBN in late February on Slot 5. With less than 30 days to go before the first voyage in Slot 5 commences on February 20, it's really coming down to the wire.

The CONTI CONQUEST and CONTI CRYSTAL, in Slot 3, are both currently facing down delays of -6 days or more by the time they arrive at their first discharge port on the West Coast of North America. Both vessels are direct transfers from the service’s predecessor, THEA - PS3, where they will make their final calls in Singapore at -16 days delayed and -23 days delayed, respectively. THEA - PS3 v18 and the v1 of the PMR - PS3 port rotation remain identical, with West Coast ports Los Angeles and Oakland taking center stage. The PS3 will be increasing her roundtrip to 84 days and adding an additional slot up to 12 vessels.

If no blank sailing was allotted for Slot 2, The CONTI CRYSTAL's first proforma departure date out of Nhava Sheva on the PS3 would have been on January 30 instead of February 06. This would effectively make her an additional -7 days delayed at the outset of her deployment, bringing her accrued delay for departure out her last load port in Asia to a minimum of -12 days on her very first sailing.

This strategic blank in Slot 2 enables Premier Alliance partners to offset this inevitable delay by at least one week. While the vessel's own position and planned rotation doesn't undergo a shift, the shift in planned proforma date and assigned slot created by the insertion of a blanked voyage allows for a better reliability outcome in the data.

More broadly speaking, a look at the standard deviation on all past and upcoming arrivals on both The Alliance and Premier's versions of the PS3 from December 2024 through April 2025 show what we call a 'reset' of existing delays. While bringing these delays down to zero has proved challenging even with the introduction of a virgin service, there is a noticeably more positive and consistent outset to the voyages on the PMR - PS3, for now.

Standard delay deviation for THEA - PS3 arrivals, December 2024 - April 2025 stddev-thea-ps3

Standard delay deviation for PMR - PS3 arrivals, December 2024 - April 2025 stddev-pmr-ps3

As a final note in this investigation, both vessels are scheduled to omit each call into Port Klang (there are 2 on the rotation of the PS3) and their call into Colombo during the beginning of their transitions. We can only speculate if this is intended to scale back further potential increase in delay on the Asian leg of their journey but it's not unlikely that we are seeing a display of these two strategies used in tandem.

Please see our latest from January 31, 2025: Far East - West Coast North America Trade Lane Review

eeSea Signals