Blank sailings increasing rapidly on Transpacific: Sea-Intelligence

 The impact of the U.S. tariff war continues to have a direct impact on container shipping operations as the number of cancelled sailings on the Transpacific trade increased drastically again last week.

"When we look at the data, it is quite evident that the impact of the trade war has caused many shippers to pause, or outright cancel, shipments. This in turn reduces demand for capacity on container vessels to which carriers respond by cancelling sailings," says the latest update from Sea-Intelligence.

"Figure 1 shows scheduled blanked capacity as a percentage of planned capacity on Asia-North America East Coast, for the weeks in the period from March 24 to May 12 as it was scheduled at different points in time, during weeks 12-16. The purple line shows the scheduled blanked share as recorded in the past week (week 16)."

In week 12 (dark blue line), the scheduled blanked share was zero percent in most weeks from April 7 to May 12, the update added. "There is now a major spike in blank sailings for the week starting on May 5, which is quite extreme. By week 15, carriers had scheduled blanked capacity equalling 35 percent of the planned capacity for that week starting May 5. At week 16, however, this increased to 42 percent of the total offered capacity, which is a seven percentage point increase week/week. On the Asia-North America West Coast, we see this escalation a week earlier. For the week starting April 28, 13 percent of the offered capacity was scheduled to be blanked as of week 15, which more than doubled to 28 percent as of week 16."

The level of escalation in blanked capacity illustrates a dramatic change in the market - partly from the perspective of the magnitude of the blank sailings, which are akin to what we tend to see seasonally following Chinese New Year in January/February and Chinese Golden Week in October, and partly from the perspective that many of these blank sailings have been announced with very limited advance warning to the shippers, the update added.

Container shipping rates decline
Drewry’s World Container Index decreased two percent to $2,157 per 40ft container during the week to April 24, 2025, 79 percent below the previous pandemic peak of $10,377 in September 2021.

The index, however, was 52 percent higher than the average $1,420 in 2019 (pre-pandemic), according to the latest update.

"Freight rates from Shanghai to New York decreased three percent to $3,611 per 40ft container, and those from Shanghai to Los Angeles and Rotterdam to Shanghai decreased two percent to $2,617 and $481 per 40ft container, respectively. Rates from Shanghai to Genoa and Los Angeles to Shanghai remained stable."

Drewry expects rates to continue to decline in the coming week due to uncertainty stemming from reciprocal tariffs, the update added.