Identification of shipping schedule cancellations with AIS data: an application to the Europe-Far East route before and during the COVID-19 pandemic

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The COVID-19 pandemic caused severe disruptions throughout global supply chains. In response to this situation, container carriers had been cancelling services and port calls. The reasons behind the cancellations were diverse: restoring schedule reliability; coping with sudden demand decreases; or with severe port congestion. To fully understand the implications of this practice, it is crucial to have a robust measurement method. This paper presents a novel method to estimate the incidence of port call cancellations based on AIS data. A normal service is first defined, on the basis of the most frequent port call sequence, and deviations are measured subsequently. As a first glance at the unique value of this method, we apply it to the ports along the Europe-Far East route. A binomial logistic model expresses the probability a port is skipped, based on its own characteristics, the size of vessels, and the region in which the port is located. We find non-trivial effects related to vessel size. At the largest end of the vessel size scale, the ports attracting mega vessels (with a capacity above 15K TEUs) were less affected by cancellations in 2018-2019. This relationship reversed during the 2020-2021 period, and handling mega vessels seemed to have become a burden for ports during the pandemic. Another important result of this study is that, before the COVID-19 pandemic, the rate of cancellations was much more uneven between world regions than after the COVID-19 outbreak. This study provides useful operational insights to port authorities and governments, enabling them to anticipate the effects of future crises.