IN Brief:
- Sea-Intelligence’s August–September east-west comparison put MSC on 68.9% schedule reliability and Gemini on 68.4%.
- Gemini achieved 92.9% on Asia–North Europe and 83.2% on Asia–Mediterranean, exceeding MSC on both lanes.
- A separate September individual-carrier assessment placed Maersk first at 64.8%, illustrating the different populations being compared.
MSC narrowly overtook the Gemini Cooperation in an August–September 2026 comparison of east-west container shipping schedule reliability, scoring 68.9% against Gemini’s 68.4%. The Sea-Intelligence figures compare service performance across major east-west trades; they do not represent the probability of an individual customer’s shipment arriving on time.
Gemini, the Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd network partnership, declined by 9.4 percentage points from the preceding rolling comparison, while MSC fell by 1.2 points. The earlier July–August figures put Gemini at 77.8% and MSC at 70.1%. The change of leader therefore reflects a sharper deterioration in Gemini’s aggregate performance, not an improvement in MSC’s own on-time score.
Sea-Intelligence’s east-west partnership comparison pools services across a rolling two-month interval. A different September ranking covers individual carriers, while a separate all-industry average encompasses a broader population. The measures differ in their underlying trade lanes and reporting periods, so a carrier can lead one table while its partner or competitor ranks differently in another. The relative ranking therefore depends on the population of services being measured.
Lane-specific results show why the aggregate lead was narrow. Gemini achieved 92.9% reliability on Asia–North Europe against MSC’s 78.2%, a 14.7-percentage-point advantage. Asia–Mediterranean also favoured Gemini, at 83.2% against 77.1%. Those results concern defined corridors during the measured period, whereas the overall east-west figure includes weaker-performing routes in both directions.
Transatlantic figures also showed notable strengths for Gemini. Sea-Intelligence reported 98.7% on North America east coast–Mediterranean and 97% on North America east coast–North Europe. In the reverse direction, reliability reached 100% on Mediterranean–North America east coast and 91.1% on North Europe–North America east coast. Those are route-specific observations for the measured period, not promises that every future sailing on those lanes will arrive as scheduled.
Lower reliability on some backhaul lanes weighed on Gemini’s aggregate figure, particularly services returning from North America and Europe towards Asia. Disruption at Asian ports can affect a vessel’s subsequent rotation, but the published league table does not establish one cause for every late arrival. A ship delayed at an earlier terminal may miss a berth window farther along the route, and schedule recovery depends on available sea time, berth access and working capacity at later ports.
Across the east-west trades, industry reliability fell by 3.5 percentage points month on month to 53.6% for August–September. The Ocean Alliance recorded 44.8%, down 3.4 points, and Premier Alliance achieved 41.5%, down 1.5 points. Against that wider backdrop, MSC and Gemini both remained above the average, despite their own declines. The industry-wide figure is an aggregate indicator and cannot substitute for the performance of an individual booking or departure.
Sea-Intelligence’s separate September individual-carrier reporting put the industry’s global on-time share at 50.6%, up 0.9 percentage points from August, with late arrivals averaging 6.65 days behind schedule. A reliability percentage records whether a scheduled arrival met the on-time definition; the average delay describes the severity of misses. Both measures are needed to distinguish frequent minor deviations from fewer but more disruptive late arrivals.
Among the 13 individual carriers tracked for September, Maersk ranked first at 64.8%, followed by Hapag-Lloyd at 60.4% and MSC at 57.7%; CMA CGM recorded 51.8%. Maersk’s position as the leading individual carrier therefore sits alongside MSC’s narrowly stronger result in the separate alliance and east-west comparison. Presenting the two rankings without their different populations and time periods would create an apparent contradiction that does not exist in the underlying figures.
Reliability on scheduled vessel services affects the coordination of discharge, customs release and onward transport. A warehouse that allocates unloading labour for a specific delivery window may need to rebook capacity if the vessel and container become available later than expected. Those downstream consequences depend on the actual service, port and connection: an alliance-wide percentage is too coarse to determine the risk of a particular consignment.
Gemini’s stronger Asia–Europe results and weaker overall comparison are consistent once the individual trades are separated. The reported August–September score remains below the partnership’s stated ambition of approximately 90% reliability, but that ambition is a target, not a guarantee. Route-specific performance and current vessel schedules provide more useful inputs to shipment planning than the alliance-wide score alone.
