CKYH Alliance restructuring Asia/U.S. East Coast loops

CKYH Alliance restructuring Asia/U.S. East Coast loops    CKYH Alliance carriers COSCO, “K” Line, Hanjin Shipping and Yang Ming will from May rename and change port rotations on three of their five weekly services in the all-water Asia/U.S. East Coast trade.
   To provide regionally differentiated service names, the Asian carrier alliance is renaming the AWE-1, AWE-4, and AWE-5 services to AWE South Loop, AWE Central Loop, and AWE North Loop.
   The carriers said that change would both improve the schedule reliability and transit times. Hong Kong to New York will be 22 days while Shanghai to New York will take 23 days. “With this more reliable schedule, new AWE service will then compare favorably with MLB (mini landbridge) service in terms of transit time,” the carriers said in a joint statement.
   The three renamed services will be operated by a total of 24 Panamax ships of about 4,000 TEUs, with 10 provided by “K” Line and 14 coming from Hanjin.
   The port rotations for the alliance’s all-water services will be:
   * AWE South: Chiwan, Yantian, Hong Kong, New York, Norfolk, Savannah and back to Chiwan.
   * AWE Central: Xiamen, Hong Kong, Yantian, Ningbo, Shanghai, Busan, Savannah, Norfolk, Charleston and Xiamen.
   * AWE North: Qingdao, Ningbo, Shanghai, Busan, New York, Wilmington, Savannah, Busan and Qingdao.
   * AWE-2: Qingdao, Shanghai, Yantian, Hong Kong, Charleston, New York, Boston and Qingdao.
   * AWE-3: Hong Kong, Yantian, Kaohsiung, Busan, Savannah, Wilmington, New York, Kaohsiung and Hong Kong.