DIGITAL
PROGRESS The e-AWB has fallen out of
Paperless
pipedreams
favour in industry discussion.
Matthias Hurst, Director, Global
Airfreight Initiatives for Agility,
brings the important subject
back under the spotlight, notes
Felicity Stredder.
“The air cargo business
is drowning in
paper”: these were the
words of IATA’s then-Director
General and CEO, Giovanni
Bisignani, back in 2005 when
the organisation kick-started
e-freight, the cargo component
of its Simplifying the Business
initiative, launched in 2004.
The e-freight initiative aimed
to achieve paperless cargo
processing by 2010, saving
US$1.2bn annually (based
on then-cargo volumes) and
reducing shipping times
by up to 25%. Fifteen years
since the launch of IATA
StB and nine years on from
the intended completion of
paperless air cargo, 100%
e-AWB implementation is still
a long way off. ALI revisits the
forgotten topic with Agility’s
Matthias Hurst.
Recent progress
Adoption of the electronic air
waybill has been a slow burn
since its inception. The need to sign a multitude of agreements
in order to partake hindered uptake initially, so IATA launched
Resolution 672 to provide a single, standardised agreement,
enabling all parties of the agreement to utilise the e-AWB. Since
the Multilateral e-AWB Agreement introduced in 2013, IATA
has launched further initiatives designed to accelerate adoption,
including the eAWB360 call to action, eAWBLink, an entry-level
industry tool designed to help small and medium-sized freight
forwarders become e-AWB capable, and, most recently, ONE
Record, a project to drive an end-to-end digital logistics and
transport supply chain.
Hurst comments on the uptake in recent months. “Usually
e-AWB performance would reveal that the larger forwarders have
considerably outperformed the industry average; however, up
until May 2018, progress was steady, but rather slow. Since June
2018, we have seen a noticeable improvement from some of the
forwarders, but it remains to be seen if this is sustainable.” At last
count, e-AWB uptake stood at 58.5% in October 2018, an increase
of 2.2 percentage points on the month before – and a long way
off the 2018 year-end target of 68%. Given the implementation
rate of 51.7% in the November of 2017, progress indeed remains
incremental.
e-AWB incentives
Reasons for ditching paper processes remain nonetheless
convincing. Hurst discourses on the benefits: “As far as the main
advantages of e-AWB are concerned, cost reduction usually is
mentioned. This is mainly related to avoiding redundant data
capture, as well as to saving effort for printing, handling, shipping
and filing physical documents.
Another advantage certainly
is that contractual data
and related instructions are
available to stakeholders in a
timelier fashion and required
workstreams can be triggered
and processed in parallel,” he
explains. “For example, this can
be done through system status
changes rather than being
dependent on the sequential
order derived from document
handovers. Data availability
and accuracy are also points to
mention that can be positively
impacted by the e-AWB
processes.”
Challenges remain
Electronic AWBs also bring
their own challenges and a
level of complexity to the
operation, however. “The first
issue to consider is the ‘multi
use’ functionality of the air
waybill that has evolved over
time. Theoretically, the ‘multi
use’ purpose can usually
www.airlogisticsinternational.com February 2019 35
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