Air cargo security is at last moving up the agenda in the USA, but airlines and forwarders remain unsure about what measures may be to follow and confused about who is in charge.
The industry held its collective breath in late January when US Customs proposed that the contents of all cargo shipments should be notified to them 12 hours before departure for regular cargo and eight hours before for express shipments. Airlines and forwarders say the proposals would have killed large portions of the air cargo business stone dead. "For a few days, the world came unglued," is how Jack Boisen, vice-president cargo for Continental Airlines and security spokesman for TIACA, the International Air Cargo Association, puts it.
Customs later said the proposal was just a talking point, but some kind of pre-flight information is widely expected to be required later this year. At present only some forwarders and airlines use the USA's electronic advanced manifest system (AMS) and then only to provide information pre-arrival. Boisen says that providing data two hours before departure could be realistic, but others say some carriers would struggle.
Customs has also started to promote its C-TPAT (Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism) certification in the air cargo industry which requires forwarders and airlines to answer questions about the security procedures of other transportation partners. Joel Ditkowsky, a New York-based customs broker and a member of the Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) cargo advisory committee, says that while he welcomed the initiative, it lacks teeth without an accompanying inspection programme.
The same doubt is raised about the TSA's centralised Known Shipper database, which is currently being rolled out. Ditkowsky says the idea is a good one, saving each individual forwarder from certifying all its customers, but questions whether forwarders are the right people to check up on shippers. "We can say a shipper is known to us, but not whether they are a security risk. That should be the job of the TSA," he says.
The biggest worry, however, is that Customs and the TSA appear to be working independently of each other. "The Department of Homeland Security is supposed to co-ordinate all these efforts, but we are a long way from that now," says Boisen. He also says that lack of funding from Congress is likely to limit the TSA's cargo activities until at least 2004. n
PETER CONWAY NEW YORK
Source: Airline Business
