IATA promoted its e-freight initiative to the air cargo industry at an industry event last month, but found many have reservations about the project.
E-freight’s aim is for early adopters to eliminate paper documents from cargo by 2007, with the rest of the industry following in 2010. In recent months it has made strong progress, through a core group of six airlines, joined by forwarder and customs representatives.
But at the Geneva conference, Henrik Ambak, vice-president of IT for Cargolux, one of the core airlines, cast doubt on whether airlines and forwarders would give the project enough resources. “This industry is very good at adapting when the regulatory environment makes something mandatory, but here there is no external regulatory pressure,” he said. Meanwhile, Cargolux chief executive Ulrich Ogiermann has said 2007 “is probably too tight a deadline” and called for the project to be delayed a year.
Delegates also suggested that e-freight would be much more complex than passenger automation. “IATA is pleased with the success of passenger e-ticketing, but I can’t begin to explain how different cargo is,” said John O’Connell, a British forwarders representative and member of the previous IATA Paperless Cargo Committee.
The cargo IT manager of another European airline privately questioned the willingness of airlines to invest in the project. “As an airline, I am only interested in the air waybill,” the manager said. “Why should I invest even a cent to help forwarders with customs clearance?”
Jim Friedel, president cargo for Northwest Airlines suggested that the project should re-focus on using existing electronic data interchange (EDI) messages. Eighty percent of paper documents could be replaced by just three EDI messages, he told delegates.
IATA shrugged off the doubts, claiming the presence of 60 airlines at the event showed e-freight was being taken seriously. IATA director general Giovanni Bisignani urged the air cargo industry to embrace paperless methods or have them imposed on them by customs authorities or shippers. “An enormous amount of work is still ahead of us, but there is no turning back,” he said.
PETER CONWAY/GENEVA
Source: Airline Business
