What are ETA and ETD in shipping?
Carriers publish ETD and ETA in their schedules and repeat them on the booking confirmation. For sea freight, the ETD is the vessel's planned sailing from the port of loading and the ETA its planned arrival at the port of discharge. Both are estimates: weather, port congestion, blank sailings and missed transshipment connections all move them, so a forwarder tracks every update and passes changes to the customer before they turn into surprises.
Estimated dates differ from actual ones, ATD (actual time of departure) and ATA (actual time of arrival), which are recorded once the event has happened. The vessel's ETA at the port is also not the delivery date: discharge, customs clearance and the final truck leg can add days. Promising a door-delivery date based on the vessel ETA alone is a common source of missed expectations.
Several deadlines hang off these dates. The cargo and document cut-offs fall days before ETD, and missing them rolls the container to the next sailing. On the arrival side, the ETA drives the arrival notice, customs pre-filing and truck planning, and free time for demurrage usually starts counting at discharge. Checking ETA changes daily is one of the cheapest ways to avoid storage and demurrage charges.