MSC revives Pearl transpacific service for early peak season

MSC has followed Maersk in introducing another transpacific service to meet the peak demand, the world's largest liner operator reintroducing its Pearl service. The Pearl string will be restarted on Saturday, with a 42-day port rotation of Yantian-Xiamen-Long Beach-Yantian. The service, using 4,800 teu to 8,200 teu ships, ran previously from February to August 2025, before being withdrawn. MSC's Pearl revival comes shortly after Maersk Line introduced an ad hoc TPX service to meet demand for Asia-US West Coast sailings. Linerlytica argued that the AI boom and demand for renewable energy products, propelled by the Strait of Hormuz closure, were supporting the early peak season. "The positive momentum is driven by both a shortage of vessel space and box equipment, and the tight market is expected to last through July, prompting carriers to redeploy ships to the transpacific," the consultancy said. Last Friday, the Shanghai Containerised Freight Index showed the Shanghai-US West Coast rate gained 10% from 29 May, to $4,552 per 40ft, while the Shanghai-US East Coast rate rose 8% to $5,741 per 40ft. After successfully implementing peak season surcharges on 1 June, liner operators are trying for another round of rate hikes on 15 June - and expectations, Linerlytica said, of the next rate hike sticking were tempered by the added capacity from Pearl and TPX. The revived Pearl service will start with the 4,872 teu MSC Lyse V, the initial cycle scheduled with five ships, with one blank sailing. The other ships being the 5,044 teu MSC Tampico V, 8,182 teu MSC Douala VIII, 8,266 teu MSC Archimidis VIII, and the 5,711 teu MSC Dymphna. Several of these vessels are being diverted from the Indus Express service, linking the Indian subcontinent/Middle East to the US east coast, after demand on this lane softened. The Indus Express service ran a Port Qasim-Nhava Sheva-Mundra-Caucedo-Freeport (Bahamas)-Savannah-Charleston-Norfolk-Baltimore-New York rotation, via the Cape of Good Hope. The last sailing was the 4,992 teu MSC Pratiti, which departed Mundra on 3 June. It has omitted calls at Abu Dhabi and Jebel Ali since March, due to the conflict, operated with 11 ships of 4,200 teu-7,800 teu, which are set to be redeployed. However, MSC will maintain the INDUSA service to provide India-US East Coast connections, with a truncated rotation, calling at Mundra-Nhava Sheva-Colombo-New York-Norfolk-Mundra, deploying 11 ships of 6,600 teu-9,600 teu.

Putzger perspective: Choked up

US airports are in urgent need of intelligent investment and management to meet increasing demand, but cargo is relatively unscathed. In recent weeks, airlines have cut tens of thousands of flights due to the stratospheric cost of aviation fuel that has rendered many routes no longer profitable. These cuts have played out overwhelmingly in regional sectors served with narrowbody planes, so the impact on cargo has been negligible. The same can be said about the repercussions of flight cuts at Chicago O'Hare, where the US FAA mandated a reduction of 300 daily flights from the summer schedule because the volume of operations was pushing beyond the airport's capacity. The regulator felt it had to step in to avert a meltdown after airlines had filed plans for altogether 3,080 daily flights, a 14.9% increase in operations over the 2,680 flights last summer. Last year only 56% of O'Hare's departures and 58% of arrivals were on time, which triggered cascading delays in the national networks. This year the airport's operations are hampered by closures of taxiways caused by construction, which adds to a mix of factors that have disrupted airline schedules across the US, of which an outdated and understaffed air traffic control system is arguably the biggest cause for headache. O'Hare is not alone. Several other US hubs have been struggling, including Denver and the trio of major airports serving the New York City area. In March, flights at the Washington airports had to be halted twice for more than one hour, owing to problems with ageing technology. The administration is taking steps to modernise the air traffic control system, which promises relief down the road, but this is but one factor that has strained airport capacity at major gateways. The sheer volume of growth is a massive source of concern. IATA's latest traffic growth predictions see passenger demand more than double by 2050. Neither ATC system modernisation nor infrastructure development on the ground alone can maintain flows. According to SITA, optimising individual elements is not enough and is actually becoming the biggest operational bottleneck. What is needed is an alignment of operational decisions in real time on the basis of connecting data and actors across the airport ecosystem with the aid of predictive analytics. Each department has to raise its focus beyond its own KPIs, shared visibility must translate into collaborative decision-making, and operational data have to flow into a shared source of truth that allows uses optimization tools to recommend the best operational actions, SITA argues.

DSV launches Luxembourg-Indianapolis pharma air route

DSV has launched a new Luxembourg (LUX) to Indianapolis International (IND) pharma air route to improve temperature-controlled deliveries. This dedicated connection between Luxembourg and Indianapolis connect two critical nodes in the global pharmaceutical supply chain, said the freight forwarder. Indianapolis is one of the US' fastest-growing life sciences and healthcare logistics hubs. The latest expansion of the Air ThermoDirect healthcare network will minimise the time shipments spend in uncontrolled environments and remove the complexity of active containers, explained DSV. This is designed to help pharmaceutical companies protect product integrity while lowering total cost, emissions and operational uncertainty across critical lanes. "The DSV Indianapolis operations will play a pivotal role in the global Air ThermoDirect healthcare network, enhancing end to end visibility and control across pharma manufacturing regions in the US, Europe, the Americas, and APAC," said Kenneth Källström, executive vice president, global head, healthcare, DSV. "By strengthening these critical supply chain connections, this hub will help ensure that life saving therapies move with greater speed, reliability, and integrity -- ultimately delivering better outcomes for patients worldwide." Stephanie Penarete, vice president Air Product Americas, DSV, added: "Indy Wings reflects our strategy to bring the critical points of the supply chain under full accountability, ensuring reliability, integrity and performance where it matters most. "With Indy Wings, we continue linking key pharmaceutical hubs with greater precision, resilience and excellence."