An empirical study of the performance of weather routing service in the North Pacific Ocean

PurposeThe objective of this research is to examine the performance of weather routing service in the North Pacific Ocean based on a global container shipping company.Design/methodology/approachThe data comprise two passages: one that departs from the port of Taipei to the port of Los Angeles (TPE-LAX) and another that departs from the port of Tacoma to the port of Kaohsiung (TCM-KSG). A weather routing service was utilized to compare the differences of the distance, sailing time and fuel consumed among different voyages.FindingsResults indicated that the average speed of vessel in winter is faster than in summer. The vessels consumed much more fuel in the winter than they did in the summer. In terms of the distance of the passage, the results show that the ships' sailing distance across the North Pacific Ocean in the summer was shorter than it was in the winter.Research limitations/implicationsDue to the difficultly of practical data collection, relatively few sailing records were employed in this study. It is suggested that additional sailing records should be collected, which adopt weather routing recommendations, to more comprehensively analyze sailing performance in future research.Practical implicationsThe study's findings offer valuable guidance to different stakeholders in the maritime industry (e.g. seafarers, marine hull and machinery companies, Protection and Indemnity Club (P&I), ocean container carriers and freight forwarders) to clarify their responsibilities in order to achieve desired sailing outcomes.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors' knowledge, the current study is the first research to utilize practical sailing data to provide objective evidence of sailing performance based on a weather routing service, which can assist various stakeholders to make optimal decisions.