53 Blank Sailings and What They Actually Mean for LSPs (Weeks 52–04)

In Drewry’s latest cancelled sailings tracker, carriers have announced 53 blank sailings out of 704 scheduled departures on the main East–West trades for the five-week window from Week 52-2025 to Week 04-2026.

On LinkedIn or in the news, that shows up as yet another “shipping chaos” headline.

But for logistics service providers (LSPs), blank sailings are not random. They’re a capacity management tool. If you understand why carriers blank and where they blank, you can translate those headlines into concrete decisions for your lanes, customers, and allocations.

This post breaks down:

What “53 blank sailings” actually represents in context
Why carriers are pulling capacity in this specific five-week window
How 8% withdrawn capacity feels in day-to-day operations
A practical playbook for LSPs for Weeks 52–04
How event-level visibility changes your response

1. What 53 Blank Sailings Actually Represents

Drewry’s Week 52 snapshot covers the main East–West headhaul trades over five weeks:

Period: Week 52-2025 (22–28 December) to Week 04-2026 (19–25 January)
Scheduled sailings: 704
Cancelled/blanked: 53
Cancellation rate: ~8% of planned departures

Two important clarifications:

This is not 8% of global capacity.
It’s 8% of scheduled sailings on key East–West loops in that five-week window.
Most sailings still operate.
Even with 53 blanks, around 92% of departures are still planned to sail.

The lane mix is uneven:

The Transatlantic westbound sees the largest share of blankings in this period.
The Transpacific eastbound is also heavily affected.
Asia–Europe/Med carries a smaller share of these cancellations, but on top of Red Sea / Cape disruptions and service changes.

So for an LSP, the headline isn’t “capacity collapse.” It’s:

“For certain weeks and certain services, there will be fewer departures than the schedule suggests—and the remaining ones will be under more pressure.”

2. Why Carriers Are Blanking: Tools, Not Tantrums

Blank sailings can feel arbitrary from the ground, but they are usually the result of rational carrier decisions. In this particular five-week window, three drivers stand out.

2.1 Protecting a Pre-CNY Rate Floor

Chinese New Year 2026 falls on 17 February. In the weeks leading up to the holiday:

Factories in China and other parts of Asia slow or shut operations.
Export volumes drop sharply for a short period.
Without capacity adjustments, those lower volumes would push spot rates down.

Blank sailings allow carriers to:

Match supply to the seasonal demand drop.
Hold a floor under rates on key trades, especially Asia–Europe and Transpacific.
Enter the CNY lull with less downward pressure on pricing.

From an LSP point of view, this means:

You are not just facing “holiday season volatility”; you’re facing intentional capacity discipline.

2.2 Re-synchronising Schedules After Cape Routing

Months of routing via the Cape of Good Hope have:

Extended voyage times by 10–20 days versus normal Suez routing.
Knocked weekly loops out of their planned rhythm.
Created delayed arrivals, off-window calls, and bunching at ports.

Blank sailings are one of the few practical ways carriers can:

Skip a departure to let the loop catch up.
Reset rotations to align more closely with published schedules for 2026.
Remove some of the accumulated delay from the network, instead of carrying it forward indefinitely.

2.3 Making Room for 2026 Network Changes

With new alliances and service designs being introduced for 2026, carriers also use blank sailings to:

Phase out or consolidate underperforming loops.
Test revised port rotations, hub choices, and dwell assumptions.
Manage fleet positioning so vessels are where they need to be when new structures go live.

In other words, what looks like “random cancellations” is often the operational side of strategic network updates.

3. How 8% Withdrawn Capacity Feels on the Ground

A single figure—8%—doesn’t tell you how your operations will feel. The effect is lumpy.

3.1 Space Tightness in Specific Weeks

Blank sailings don’t spread perfectly across the time period. You feel:

Certain weeks with fewer departures than usual on specific strings.
Higher load factors on the sailings that do run.
More risk that late or spot bookings get pushed to the next vessel.

For LSPs, that translates into:

Bookings needing to move one sailing earlier to secure the same probability of uplift.
Less flexibility to “find space somewhere” at the last minute, especially for pre-CNY cargo.

3.2 Burstiness and Reliability Distortions

When a carrier blanks a sailing, the cargo demand doesn’t vanish. It shifts:

From the cancelled voyage into earlier/later sailings.
Onto alternative services or alliances.
Through different transshipment hubs than originally planned.

Operational consequences:

Weeks that would normally carry steady volume suddenly become peaks, straining terminals and inland networks.
Reliability metrics become harder to interpret: a vessel may depart on time, but the underlying schedule has changed due to earlier blanks.

3.3 Inland and Equipment Upsets

Upstream and downstream, blank sailings disrupt:

Export terminal operations, as more cargo is funnelled into fewer departure windows.
Equipment circulation, especially in regions where specific types (e.g., 40HC) were already tight.
Inland transport planning, as drayage and rail slots have to be re-timed around remaining departures.

None of this means your operation is doomed. It simply means that capacity fluctuation is now part of the planning baseline, not an occasional anomaly.

4. How to Read Blank Sailings Strategically as an LSP

Instead of treating blank sailings as generic bad news, treat them as signals.

4.1 Go Beyond the Headline Count

Rather than stopping at “53 blanks”:

Identify which services and loops are affected.
Map them to your lanes:
- Are your key corridors disproportionately impacted?
- Are certain weeks crowded with cancellations?

Even a simple mapping exercise—service → lane → customers—will highlight where you are genuinely exposed and where you are not.

4.2 Map Exposure by Lane and Customer

For your top lanes (by volume/margin/strategic importance):

List the main services you use.
Overlay the published blank sailings for Weeks 52–04.
For each lane, answer:
- How many departures are disappearing in this window?
- Which of my customers ship during those periods?
- What is their tolerance for delay or rerouting?

This lets you distinguish between:

High-risk flows that require proactive action, and
Low-risk flows where you can monitor and react as needed.

4.3 Anticipate “Invisible” Effects

Even if your specific sailing is not blanked:

Higher loads on “surviving” sailings increase the risk of last-minute rollings.
Transshipment hubs may slow down as they digest concentrated volumes.
Some services may alter port rotations temporarily to accommodate changes.

This is why visibility and early warning matter. The effect of a blank on one loop often shows up as delay or congestion elsewhere.

5. A Practical Response Playbook for Weeks 52–04

Here’s how you can turn this blanking wave into specific actions rather than recurring surprises.

5.1 Pull Forward Critical Bookings

For shipments that:

Have hard delivery windows, or
Carry high financial or reputational risk,

consider:

Booking one sailing earlier than you otherwise would on services affected by blanks.
Avoiding heavy reliance on last-minute spot space during those weeks.

This is particularly important for pre-CNY exports and Q1-critical inventory.

5.2 Diversify Services and Gateways Where It Makes Sense

If your main loop on a lane is heavily blanked:

Explore alternative services, even if transit times differ slightly.
Evaluate neighbouring ports of loading or discharge, where your inland network allows.
Balance:
- The cost and complexity of alternative routings
- Against the risk of repeated rollings on a constrained primary service.

The goal is not to chase every alternative, but to have at least one credible plan B on your key corridors.

5.3 Reset Internal Cut-Offs and Customer Expectations

Look at your internal SOPs:

Are your current cut-offs still realistic in a world with fewer departures and fuller ships?
Do sales and account teams understand that Weeks 52–04 are not “business as usual”?

For customers:

Explain that carriers are actively withdrawing capacity, not just “running late.”
Share updated cut-offs for the impacted window, especially for orders tied to:
- CNY
- Retail campaigns
- Production schedules

Early, honest expectations are more valuable than optimistic promises that slip.

5.4 Watch for Bunching and Downstream Congestion

When capacity is withdrawn for several weeks, it often returns as concentrated volume later:

Monitor weeks where “catch-up” sailings arrive at key destination ports.
Align inland trucking, rail, and DC receiving plans with those bulges.

This is where many LSPs get caught off-guard: not during the blanks, but when everything arrives at once a few weeks later.

6. Why Visibility Matters More During a Blanking Wave

Blank sailings themselves are announced in advance. The real uncertainty lives in:

Actual vessel assignments
Port omissions and rotation changes
Transshipment delays
Container-level rollings

If you’re relying on once-a-day status files and manual portal checks, you often discover:

A rolled container after the fact
A skipped port call after the ship is already en route
A transshipment delay only when a customer asks, “Where is it?”

Event-level visibility changes this dynamic:

Container/B/L timelines update as:
- Vessels are re-assigned
- Voyages are cancelled or merged
- Ports of call change
- Discharge and gate-out events occur
Alerts can flag:
- “Planned vessel changed”
- “ETA has shifted beyond agreed tolerance”
- “Transshipment dwell exceeds threshold”

For TRADLINX users, that looks like:

A single shipment timeline per B/L or container, fed by carrier, port and AIS data.
Status that refreshes multiple times per day, instead of a static daily snapshot.
Data feeds that your TMS, ERP, and customer portals can rely on as the event backbone.

You can’t stop carriers from blanking a sailing. But you can:

See exactly which shipments are affected.
Act while you still have options.
Protect your customers (and your margin) with earlier, more specific information.

7. What to Watch After Weeks 52–04

Blank sailings won’t end with Week 04. As you move deeper into 2026, consider:

Does blanking continue at similar levels, or ease off as demand and networks stabilise?
How does the gradual return to Suez on some loops (and the associated capacity release) interact with blank sailings?
Do your internal processes treat blank sailing updates as one-off “news” or as a regular input into planning?

Use this five-week window as a live stress test:

Where did your current systems and processes struggle?
Which customers experienced the most unexpected disruption?
How quickly could you identify affected shipments and communicate options?

The answers to those questions will be more valuable than the “53” in isolation.

Conclusion: Turning Blank Sailings into a Planning Signal

Over Weeks 52–04, carriers are blanking about 8% of scheduled East–West sailings. That’s not random chaos; it’s capacity discipline and schedule repair ahead of Chinese New Year and 2026 network changes.

For LSPs, the practical takeaway is:

Treat blank sailings as a signal to adjust bookings, cut-offs, and communication, not just as another headline to complain about.
Map exposure by lane and customer instead of reacting generically.
Use event-level visibility to track how blanks translate into specific shipment-level changes.

Blank sailings will remain part of the industry’s toolkit. The LSPs who cope best aren’t the ones with the loudest complaints—they’re the ones who treat each blanking wave as structured input into a clear, repeatable playbook.

53 Blank Sailings and What They Actually Mean for LSPs (Weeks 52–04)

1. What 53 Blank Sailings Actually Represents