Recently, THE Alliance announced that due to poor market conditions, the Asia East EC4 route, originally scheduled to resume in mid April, will continue to be suspended until the situation in the Red Sea stabilizes further.

It is reported that in October last year, THE Alliance announced that, due to market considerations, it had decided to suspend its Asia Nordic FE5 and Asia US East Coast EC4 routes from week 46 (November 13, 2023) until further notice.

Last year, THE Alliance announced the suspension of EC4 routes▲

Last month, in order to promise shippers the strong coverage capability of their trans Pacific routes, THE Alliance announced the resumption of two trans Pacific routes suspended for nearly half a year - PN3 and EC4/SUEZ1: the EC4/SUEZ1 route from Asia to the East Coast of the United States will resume on April 15th.

But now, the THE Alliance will once again postpone the EC4 route through the Suez Canal.

Alphaliner analysts explain that the ships deployed by the THE alliance on the EC4 route will be allocated to the alliance's remaining three Asia US East Coast routes - EC1, EC2, and EC5. These routes will be expanded to provide more port docking services.

The EC1 route used to pass through the Suez Canal, but now it has changed its route to Cape of Good Hope and will make an additional stop at Xiamen on its first Asian route.

The EC2 route passes through the Panama Canal and will add an Asian port at the Yantian hub in southern China.

At the same time, the EC5 service connecting Southeast Asia and the East Coast of the United States will add connections to Charleston and New York on its return route.

The sustained damage caused by the Houser armed attack could become a de facto blockade of the Suez Canal and also affect the scheduling plans of ONE, a member of the THE alliance, which plans to launch independent services between India and the East Coast of the United States.

Starting from next month, the WIN service will postpone the first and return stops at the Damieta Transfer Center in Egypt, the first stop at Al Hersilas, and the return stop at Jeddah, while its ships must pass through the Cape of Good Hope.

"When ONE announced the launch of a new ring road in November, these three ports were already included in the initial rotation. Detour to South Africa also means that new flights will open within 11 weeks, rather than the original 9 weeks," Alphaliner wrote.

According to the eeSea liner database, all shipping companies between Asia and the East Coast of the United States currently have a total of 23 liner services per month, compared to 25 in April last year and 30 in April 2022, including one direct route from India/Middle East to the East Coast of the United States.

However, data from eeSea shows that although the number of services on the Asia East route has decreased this year, the overall capacity of the route has been increasing, which may indicate the addition of larger vessels in the past two years.

According to eeSea, the total TEU capacity provided last month was 679000 TEUs. In contrast, 684000 TEUs were deployed in March 2023 and 626000 TEUs were provided in March 2022.