Table of Contents

The World Cargo Summit in Mexico City

Dear Air Cargo Colleague,

In this newsflash issue of Cargo Tracker we focus on our commitment to industry action as stated at the recent IATA World Cargo Symposium (“Focus on Simplicity”) in Mexico City, 5-8 March 2007.

These actions were communicated to the symposium at its closing plenary.

Our commitment is now to work with the air cargo industry in delivering on these actions and in reporting back during the next World Cargo Symposium in Rome, 3-6 March 2008.

This is what makes the IATA World Cargo Symposium the air cargo industry event with a difference: moving from talk to action!

Aleks Popovich
Global Head of Cargo

Cargo Security

Cargo security was a central theme throughout the Symposium, generating a high level of delegate interest.

Two particularly important decisions were made:

The Cargo Committee and Cargo Executive Summit endorsed proposals for the formation of a Global Air Cargo Security Industry Action Group (IAG) and the development of a voluntary security audit for supply chain operators.

The IAG, based on the principle of "many voices, one message", will be co-led by the Air Freight Institute of FIATA and IATA and will be open for all industry sectors to join. The voluntary audit is intended to complement the IATA Operational Safety Audit (IOSA) and the IATA Safety Audit Programme for Ground Operations (ISAGO) and to provide a means by which complete air cargo supply chains could be accredited as secure.

More on Cargo Security

e-freight

In his opening speech at the World Cargo Symposium, Giovanni Bisignani, Director General of IATA, reminded the audience that e-freight is one of the top priorities for IATA in 2007.

e-freight was very much in focus at the WCS 2007, and a number of important decisions were made or endorsed during the IATA Cargo Committee and IATA Cargo Executive Summit meetings, which took place during the event:

• Pilots: the criteria for success for the 2007 e-freight pilot programmes were confirmed, and the airlines and forwarders involved in the pilots reiterated their very strong commitment to meet these criteria.
• IATA e-freight Message Improvement Programme (MIP): the target of having a minimum of 30 airlines participating in the IATA e-freight Message Improvement Programme by end 2007, and 60 by end 2008 was endorsed, as was the principle of airlines providing FSU messages to forwarders in return for quality FHL and FWB messages.
• Scalability beyond pilots: the principle of scalability of e-freight was a key topic of discussion, with a number of dimensions agreed upon as key to ensuring we can scale-up e-freight as quickly and efficiently as possible beyond existing pilots.

In parallel to these industry meetings, the e-freight MIP track ran for a full day, and gathered very significant interest from airlines and forwarders with a number of participants deciding to enroll into the programme for 2007.

More on e-freight

CASS / Cargo Agency agree to action....

The Cargo Agency Conference adopted a package of resolution amendments resulting from a self-assessment initiated because of a review by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. The amendments will now progress to formal government filing and acceptance.

The CASS Policy Group formally endorsed the CASS 2007 expansion plan, which will target 20 countries. It will also fully endorse the CASSlink stock management system, in which many members saw great potential to support the objective of global process simplification. CASSlink Import was also endorsed and IATA will now embark on a prioritisation process to develop a global rollout plan.

CASS business cases for Mauritius, Sri Lanka and the Baltics were fully endorsed and these countries will now progress to the pre-implementation phase.

Stay tuned.... we look forward to providing regular status updates on these projects through the Cargo Tracker.

Cargo 2000

Cargo 2000 is an intrinsic part of the IATA Simplifying the Business Air Cargo agenda, and Giovanni Bisignani made this clear in his opening speech at the World Cargo Symposium.

While e-freight focuses on process simplicity and efficiency, Cargo 2000 focuses on process reliability and quality. Both rely heavily on quality electronic data, and are preparing the ground for a totally paper-free environment for the air cargo industry.

The Cargo 2000 Board and Cargo 2000 General Members’ Assembly (AGM) both took place during the World Cargo Symposium.

The members noted with satisfaction that 2006 was one of the most successful years in attracting new members to Cargo 2000, and that there was continued interest in 2007. Members confirmed the strategic direction initiated in 2006 to involve shippers more closely into Cargo 2000 via specific customer (shipper) forum meetings — thereby making them aware of their benefits as end-customers of the air cargo supply chain. The members also endorsed the future strategic direction of Cargo 2000, with a confirmation of the role of Cargo 2000 as an industry quality champion, and a decision to bring it closer to IATA’s core Cargo organisation to give it increased means of achieving its ambitions for the industry.

More on Cargo 2000

Standards

The key areas of focus on Cargo Standards that emerged from the Symposium were:

Drive a safety management system for dangerous goods.
Drive changes to simplify ULD standards.
Focus on standardisation of time- and temperature-sensitive perishable goods across the supply chain.

Environment

The environment is an increasingly important consideration for air transport, and certainly for the air cargo industry. At the IATA Cargo Committee it was agreed that IATA should work with research establishments to develop facts relating to air cargo and the environment.

More on IATA and the Environment