Drewry recorded 47 expected blank sailings from 729 scheduled East-West departures between 7 September and 11 October 2026.. Carriers remove weekly positions to match demand, recover schedules, reposition ships, manage disruption, and reduce operating costs across networks.. The cargo remains, moving through later sailings, alternative services, or revised routings instead..
Most of us have booked a container onto a specific ship/voyage, only to be told later that the voyage has been blanked..
Blank sailings are nothing new.. In recent examples, across the main East-West trades, Drewry recorded 47 expected blank sailings out of 729 scheduled departures for the 5 weeks from 7 September to 11 October 2026, a cancellation rate of about 6%..
So why does a carrier publish a weekly service and then remove some of its sailings..??
What is a blank sailing..??
A blank sailing, sometimes also referred to as a void or cancelled sailing, means an advertised voyage will not operate in its scheduled position on a liner service.. The capacity assigned to that weekly departure is removed from the service..
The ship itself could still be active and working but can slide into a later position, omit a port, phase in or out of a service, move to another service, go for repairs, or be off-hired to its owner at the end of a charter..
An omitted port call is a different event.. The ship sails but skips a port in its rotation, and cargo is then loaded through another port, discharged elsewhere, and transshipped back, or rolled to the following ship..
A slide moves the ship into a later weekly position.. A phase-in or phase-out is a ship joining or leaving a service.. A service suspension removes the whole service.. An extra loader does the opposite, inserting a voyage when more capacity is needed..
So the phrase “carriers are blanking sailings” can describe several different decisions with very different consequences for your cargo..
What it looks like inside a network
As an example of what it looks like inside a network, Hapag-Lloyd’s Week 35 Asia and Oceania operational update, dated 30 August 2026, shows how many forms this takes in a single week..
On the China-Australia service, a structural blank sailing moves from week 37 to week 38.. The wording points to a planned gap inside the service structure rather than a reaction to that week’s disruption..
On Asia-South Europe 3, there is an agreed blank sailing in week 36, agreed because the missing voyage affects capacity marketed by more than one partner..
Then there is what Hapag-Lloyd calls a tandem omission.. On Asia-North Europe 3, one ship omits Yantian and carries 2 weeks of Shanghai cargo, while another omits Shanghai and carries 2 weeks of Yantian cargo.. Each ship saves a call, both ports stay covered, and 2 weeks of cargo from each origin is concentrated onto one ship..
The same update records a ship sliding a week on accumulated delays, more than a dozen phase-ins and phase-outs, and one service temporarily suspended..
Why removing one weekly position matters
A liner service has an advertised rotation, a proforma schedule, and enough ships to maintain the promised frequency.. If the round voyage takes 12 weeks, the service generally needs 12 ships to give one departure every week..
Anything that lengthens that round voyage forces the carrier to add a ship, stretch the interval, omit ports, or rearrange the rotation, which is exactly what the Cape of Good Hope diversions did to Asia-Europe services..
When a departure is blanked, a week of capacity disappears.. The cargo does not.. It is advanced, transferred, rerouted, or rolled, which is how one cancellation leaves the next ship carrying 2 weeks of demand..
Why carriers blank sailings
1) Demand – The reason stated most often is expected lower cargo volume.. Chinese New Year and Golden Week give advance warning that factories, trucking, warehousing, customs, and depots will all slow down.. Carrier advisories describe matching capacity to weaker expected demand, withdrawing named sailings, and arranging additional calls elsewhere to cover the affected port pairs..
How early you hear about it makes a real difference.. Several weeks of notice may let you advance cargo or switch service.. A late cancellation leaves very few choices..
2) Schedule recovery – A ship loses time through congestion, weather, berth unavailability, labour disruption, mechanical problems, or a routing change.. Once it is several days late, each missed berth window creates the next delay.. Removing a later weekly position lets that ship take the slot and operate closer to revised dates..
The pressure behind those decisions is measurable.. Sea-Intelligence reported global schedule reliability fell to 56.4% in July 2026, the sharpest monthly decline since January 2021, with late arrivals averaging 6.06 days, ostensibly due to congestion at Asian ports, where all 14 of the busiest recorded lower on-time performance.. Shanghai fell to 21%, Ningbo to 34.6%, Port Klang to 33.3%, Busan to 40.9%, and Singapore to 43.2%..
Hapag-Lloyd’s Week 35 update reported waiting times at Shanghai Yangshan of 5 to 11 days depending on the ship, plus expected Shanghai and Ningbo closures from Typhoon Saudel between 26 and 29 August..
3) Ship movements – A blank sailing frees a ship for repairs, dry-docking, redeployment, or redelivery, with another ship phasing in behind it.. On alliance services, this gets more complicated, because one carrier operates the ship while several sell slots on it..
4) Disruption – The Red Sea diversions changed ship requirements on Asia-Europe services, and any return to Suez will change them again.. In March 2026, Sea-Intelligence estimated a Strait of Hormuz closure could trap around 204,000 TEU inside the Gulf.. Changes of that size leave ships out of sequence and need cancellations, slides, phase-ins, or omissions while the network is rebuilt..
5) Cost – Most of a ship’s major costs continue whether the slots are full or empty, so a weakly utilised voyage earns less against a cost base that barely moves.. In its first-quarter 2020 investor presentation, Maersk reported that 93 blank sailings reduced deployed capacity by 3.5%, and linked this to lower container handling and network costs and reduced bunker consumption.. Those figures come from the opening months of the pandemic, but they remain direct evidence from a carrier’s own financial reporting..
The saving is not automatic, though.. Alternative calls, cargo transfers, transshipment, and rebooking all cost money too..
Can removing capacity support freight rates..??
It can reduce downward pressure.. When a departure is removed, available space falls, and if the cargo stays in the market, the remaining slots tighten..
That is the mechanism, but it does not prove that any particular voyage was withdrawn to protect a rate.. Independent analysts do draw the commercial connection, and Xeneta’s June 2026 procurement analysis described carriers using blank sailings and allocation management to balance networks and keep rates commercially sustainable..
Where regulators sit
In 2020, the Federal Maritime Commission explained that it was examining blank sailings to determine whether alliance activity caused an unreasonable reduction in service or an unreasonable increase in transportation costs..
Its monitoring covered alliance capacity changes, minutes of the committees making deployment decisions, and how those changes related to freight rate movements..
The FMC’s Fact Finding 29 final report in 2022 reported no indication that the freight prices examined resulted from collusion among carriers..
How customers can find the information
In cases of blank sailings carriers publish more than most customers realise.. Advisories name the affected services, voyages, ports, and proforma dates, and usually set out the alternative arrangements and cargo recovery plans.. Drewry’s Cancelled Sailings Tracker gives a free 5-week view across the main East-West trades..
The difficulty is that it sits across advisories, weekly operational updates, alliance schedules, and booking notifications, all changing at different times.. Which makes watching blank sailings a continuous job, not a quarterly one..
In the next article, I look at how blank sailings affect exporters, importers, and logistics service providers, so stay tuned for that..
My Take
I have never regarded every blank sailing as evidence of rate manipulation.. A carrier running a weekly network must recover schedules, reposition ships, repair vessels, and match capacity with demand.. Maersk’s 2020 figures show that removing voyages can reduce real operating costs.. But operational logic does NOT excuse vague notices or last-minute surprises.. Customers need the replacement vessel, revised dates, routing, transshipment points, and likely cost consequences, not simply the words “blank sailing”.. The Federal Maritime Commission was right to examine capacity decisions alongside rate movements.. Transparency will not prevent cancellations, but it allows cargo owners to manage what follows with confidence..
Article FAQ
What is a blank sailing..??
A blank sailing means an advertised voyage will not operate in its scheduled position on a liner service.. The capacity assigned to that departure is removed.. The vessel may move into a later position, transfer to another service, enter repairs, phase out of the network, or return to its owner after a charter ends..
Why do carriers blank sailings..??
Carriers blank sailings to match capacity with expected demand, recover disrupted schedules, release vessels for repairs or redeployment, or rebuild rotations after major routing changes.. Removing a weakly utilised voyage can also reduce network, container-handling, and bunker costs, although alternative cargo arrangements may create costs elsewhere..
How does a blank sailing affect booked cargo..??
The cargo may move earlier, roll to the following vessel, transfer to another service, or follow a different routing.. Customers should confirm revised cut-offs, port calls, transshipment arrangements, documentation requirements, delivery dates, and additional costs.. The cancelled departure removes capacity, but it does NOT remove the cargo waiting to move..
Critical Note: Is a port omission the same as a blank sailing..??
No.. With a blank sailing, the advertised voyage does not operate in its scheduled position.. With a port omission, the vessel continues its voyage but skips one scheduled call.. Both disrupt cargo, but the operational event and recovery plan differ, so customers should check the carrier’s exact wording before deciding what action to take..
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