The Federal Maritime Commission gives a port omission the same label as a cancelled voyage. The rule on refusal of cargo space defines a blank sailing as a sailing that skips one or more specific ports while still traversing the rest of the scheduled route, or the entire sailing being cancelled. The difference matters most once the container is loaded.
Drewry’s Cancelled Sailings Tracker of 23 October expects 56 cancellations on the major East-West trades between week 44 (26 October to 1 November) and week 48, out of 714 planned sailings, an 8% rate, and the eastbound transpacific carries 32% of them. The tracker compares sailings announced by each alliance with scheduled sailings, so it counts announcements made in advance.
A call skipped after departure is a different event. C.H. Robinson’s Edge analysis, as reported by Logistics News PH, says a cancellation announced before Golden Week can be planned around, but a skipped port call or missed transshipment connection after a container is already on the water “forces cargo to wait for alternate feeder vessels or rerouting through different hubs, extending backlogs and tying up equipment.”
The same coverage puts global port congestion at a four-year high, absorbing roughly 12% of vessel capacity. Carriers, it says, increasingly choose omissions and skipped calls to regain schedule integrity after a disruption, which shifts the risk onto cargo already en route, and recent typhoon closures of Chinese ports made vessel bunching and omissions worse. CargoLinked’s guide to void sailings puts the usual notice for a cancelled voyage at weeks before departure and for a skipped call at days to weeks before the call, sometimes less. The carrier decides in both cases, and for a skipped call the reason is often congestion or schedule slippage. Booking agents use “blank” only for a full cancellation, the guide adds, so an advisory has to be read for which of the two events it announces.
Maersk’s terms treat an omission as a reason not to load
A shipper who booked under the Maersk Go Terms has no claim against Maersk for a failure to load the goods when the cause is a Port Omission, defined there as the omission of a scheduled call at any relevant port affecting the voyage due to operational reasons beyond Maersk’s reasonable control or anticipation.
After loading, the bill of lading hands the carrier the route
The house bill of lading of Maersk Logistics & Services, published as Maersk’s HBL terms, goes further once the container is aboard. Clause 21.1 lets the carrier, at any time and without notice, proceed to any port in any order and unload the goods at any port, whether or not that port is named as the port of discharge. Clause 21.2 deems anything done under it, and any delay arising from it, to be within the contractual carriage. Clause 9.1 gives no undertaking that goods arrive at any particular time, excludes liability for loss caused by delay and caps any liability that is found at the freight paid. Under clause 22, when carriage is affected by a hindrance or delay the carrier cannot avoid by reasonable endeavours, it may in its sole discretion and without notice take an alternative route, suspend carriage and store the goods ashore or afloat, or abandon carriage at a port it considers safe and convenient. For each of the first two it may charge additional freight.
Who pays to reach the port on the bill
A 2022 UNCTAD briefing on carriage contracts says additional costs may fall on cargo interests under so-called Caspiana clauses, which allow the carrier to discharge at an alternative port with the transhipment costs falling on the cargo side. The name comes from Renton v Palmyra. A dock strike broke out in London during the voyage, the carrier discharged on the continent, and the House of Lords rejected the cargo owners’ claim for the cost of transhipping to the UK.
In the judgment Lord Kilmuir said the clause operated only in specified emergencies, and Lord Somervell said the master had to have regard to the consignee’s convenience as well as the ship’s, UNCTAD records. A clause giving an unrestricted right to discharge elsewhere for the carrier’s convenience may well be controlled, it adds, by Article III(8) of the Hague Rules or by the rules of construction.
What to get in writing after an omission notice
The dropped call decides the rest. At a transshipment hub it leaves the container waiting for an alternate feeder, and at the port of discharge it opens the Caspiana question of the alternative port and its transhipment cost.
The notice should name the port where the carrier will discharge, say who pays the haul to the port on the bill of lading, and give a revised arrival date. Detention and demurrage clocks run from events such as discharge, availability and empty return, CargoLinked notes, so a later vessel moves them. Tracking the container shows the new vessel and discharge port as soon as the carrier updates them, and the blank sailings piece covers the cancellations announced before loading.