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IATA focuses on cargo data exchange upgrade at Berlin cargo conference

THE air cargo industry needs to make better use of cargo data, with a focus on the end customer, reports London's Air Cargo News.

This will be the message of IATA cargo chief Glyn Hughes, at the upcoming 10th World Cargo Symposium to be held on March 15-17 in Berlin under the conference theme of the "value of air cargo".

"Rather than going into its shell and saying that the end of the world is nigh we think it is time for the air cargo industry to say yes, we see challenges, but the value proposition of air cargo is as strong now as it has ever been," said Mr Hughes.

Mr Hughes recognises that air freight processes need greater transparency, predictability and reliability, requiring "quite dramatic change", particularly, "if we can get some of our internal infrastructure challenges addressed", he said.

The IATA Cargo boss said the industry needs to make greater use of the electronic air waybill (e-AWB).

"If we cannot as an industry remove that first piece of paper then everything else that we need to do is impossible to achieve." The longer term vision is to go fully electronic and "remove paper from the whole supply chain".

Mr Hughes said that the current paper-based linear approach and peer to peer data exchange needs to change because "you are still sending the information to the next party in the chain", without letting people throughout the chain respond to that data.

"We are advocating the third phase which is when you go to information exchange via information repositories or cloud computing.

Ground handling, and the data locked in that part of the supply chain, is an important issue to be raised in Berlin. "We need to restructure how the ground handling activity is done, because there is so much inefficiency," said Mr Hughes.

"Over the last 15 years many carriers have moved away from a core service and outsourced it to one of the major ground handlers. These organisations then had the challenge of taking 20 or 30 carrier requirements for standards and trying to build those into one internal process in the warehouse."

IATA will be introducing a summit at the WCS for chief information or technology officers across the industry, be it at an airline, airport, ground handler, trucking company or forwarder.