Lufthansa Cargo has made instant online bookings available through Freightos’ WebCargo platform.

The new service enables customers to instantly look up contracted rates, assess capacity and book cargo on specific flights in real time. It will initially be available in major European markets before being rolled out globally in the months ahead.

“Through Lufthansa Cargo web service, we are driving the digitization of our industry to offer our customers and partners a convenient and fast digital interface to our products and services,” said Peter Gerber, CEO of Lufthansa Cargo.

Customers of Freightos, such as Röhlig Logistics, are already benefitting from improved visibility, instant bookings and increased data exchange accuracy.

“The new functionality enables rapid quoting and booking of our shipments,” said Dirk Schneider, global air freight director of Röhlig Logistics. “Röhlig Logistics customers benefit as one of the first through improved information flow and handling of their consignments. We are happy that we joined the pilot and look forward to extending this service further within our network.”

If capacity is unavailable, the system also supports manual online ad hoc pricing, resulting in faster air freight.

“Everyone’s talking about air cargo digitization but for most it’s just talk,” said Zvi Schreiber, CEO of Freightos. “It’s fantastic to partner with a forward-looking airline like Lufthansa Cargo for this quantum leap in cargo booking. The result of on-demand booking is that goods will move faster, with up to a day shaved off transit time, and tens of dollars saved per shipment.”

E-commerce sales drove a 9% growth in air freight demand in 2017 but manual air freight management and sales continued to cost the industry billions annually in changing fees, untapped capacity and manual labour, according to Freightos.