If you're shipping something across a sea border, the decision on whether to use air freight or sea shipping is one of the most important ones you need to make. Both shipping options have their merits, but the main issue comes with reliability, and shipping via air is the far more reliable options. Here are three reasons why air freight is superior to ocean shipping in terms of reliability. 

Rampant Ocean Delays

While delays for air travel are very common, delays for airborne freight companies are dealt with much more easily because of the lower number of passengers. Seaport delays, on the other hand, are far more common, and can back up shipping for days, if not weeks, and can result from anything from vessel collisions to stormy conditions. Since departures for ships are less frequent than with planes, as will be addressed shortly, each of these delays can compound and put your schedule out of order for a long time. 

Labor Disputes

Unlike with air freight, labor disputes are a common event in the world of ocean shipping. These delays occur when the workers who unload and load the ships are unhappy with their contracts or if these agreements run out. Labor disputes are far more common with seaports than at airports, meaning that your package is far more likely to get where it needs to be on time if you choose to ship by plane, which tends to run much more smoothly than ocean shipping. 

More Frequent Departures

This might be the biggest difference between the two forms of shipping. When shipping by sea, departures are far less frequent than by air simply because the trips take longer by boat. This means that if a shipment doesn't make it onto the boat, your package could be sitting in a port for up to a week. Airline freight companies, on the other hand, have daily or even multiple daily departures, meaning that delays aren't compounded nearly as much as when using an ocean shipping company.

Time is always of the essence when shipping freight across large distances, so it is important to know how your options look in terms of timeliness. However, one of these estimates is only as useful as the reliability of the shipping company, and it is here that shipping by air greatly exceeds ocean shipping. With all of the issues associated with the reliability of sea shipping, air freight is really the only way to get the job done right every time.