The ongoing inability of carriers in the broader Asia region to make substantial progress with e-AWBs and, behind that, e-commerce, was a big part of the Air Cargo Handling Conference held in Bangkok September 1-3.

 

Tellingly, a PowerPoint slide at one of the sessions bore the simple truth about the need for “e-Awareness as e-AWB is not known or understood.”

 

Presenters at the session indicated that there has been some progress on the use of e-AWBs, although the above statement is more the truth.

 

Abu Dhabi-based Etihad Cargo is to start rolling out their e-AWB within the next two weeks, Robert Fordree, Etihad’s head of cargo handling told the audience. It will be staggered and will start out as a cost, but it will be a saving later, he said. “But not now.”

 

Part of the explanation he gave is understandable: a shipper’s head office will buy in, but the rest of the organization is less enthusiastic, and the initiative founders on local offices not pushing – or maybe not understanding the need to do so fully.

 

“This is one of the frustrations we’ve all had,” said Fordree. “It's just so slow to move.”

 

This was corroborated by John DeBenedette, managing director of Worldwide Information Network, who described the situation as “patchwork.”

 

Just how much so was made clear by Oliver Neerfeld, head of commercial operations in Asia Pacific for CHAMP Cargosystems. He made the point e-AWB is very European- and Middle Eastern-centric, and looking at Singapore and Hong Kong is not enough for Asia. Complicating this, the region’s other two tech-savvy nations are not as advanced as their image suggests.

 

“Many think that South Korea and Japan are far ahead, but they are not,” he said.

 

He also spoke about the Philippines, where English is broadly spoken but the depth of knowledge about how to use tech is limited. CHAMP hosted a June a seminar on this issue in the Philippines, he said; it was well attended, with 55 from the freight forwarder community and 20 from Cebu Pacific and Philippine Airlines.

 

“Most of these participants, especially from the freighter forwarders, didn’t have a clue,” he said.

 

That might be the least of the problem, though, according to DeBenedette, who said the industry was having the “wrong conversation” by mobilizing to express what is essentially a written document.

 

His view, one which resonates with many at the conference and beyond, is that air cargo must  become much more like other sectors of the economy and go cyber in a big way.

 

“We actually need to have each other's business systems talk to each other over free ubiquitous internet communications. That’s how billions of dollars a day of transactions securely take place in retail and other commercial industries. We are not really solving the problem,” he said.

 

Behind the problems over e-AWB usage is the collective failure of the airlines and other companies to tap e-commerce, which warranted a session in its own right. (It soon will warrant a conference in its own right, as one source estimates the value of e-commerce to be US$41 billion by 2021.)

 

Part of the problem at the moment, let alone the future, is that there are too many stakeholders as the industry fragments. In a sector where mobilizing for change is already difficult, mobilizing has become even more difficult because of the rise of the one-person seller. The phrase ‘e-fulfillment operator’ was used at one point to describe this phenomena.

 

The issue, though, is not the language but the implications of what Glyn Hughes, the IATA’s global head of cargo, described as “mega numbers of smaller shippers” who do not have the knowledge or the foresight to check the regulations.

 

Hughes us as an example the lithium batteries which were being sold by an online seller who admitted via social media that the product was being mislabeled, and that its size and weight was being misreported. He was caught, Hughes said, but he wondered how many others aren’t and what were the security and safety implications of this sort of negligence.

 

The proliferation of e-commerce sites is a significant concern for IATA, Hughes said, adding it was working to educate those involved.

 

“There is a tremendous opportunity in doing a product portfolio for this market,” said Stan Wraight, senior executive director of Strategic Aviation Solutions International. It is true of the market overall, and while the conference made no great statement, ringing declarations or outlined specific measures, it did start moving towards that goal.

 

 

By Michael Mackey

Southeast Asia Correspondent | Bangkok