A number of different issues were raised as IATA reported on its attempts to modernize air cargo, the international airline body told attendees at its global media day in Geneva.

The core of this is IATA’s StB programme – short for Simplifying the Business – which has six goals: capitalizing on e-commerce, moving to data-on-demand, developing real-time intervention, making quality relevant, optimizing the end-to-end journey and managing cargo distribution.

What connects these themes is a move towards the use of electronic data, or as Celine Hourcade, IATA’s head of cargo transformation, put it, “Less paper. We want instant acceptance.”

This expresses itself in six projects: e-freight and the e-AWB, where there has been progress; ONE Record; Interactive Cargo; Smart Facilities; the Air Cargo Incident Database; and Cargo Connect.

Of these, ONE Record and Cargo Connect are new, with the others being very much works in progress. In the coming year, they will work very much together with other StB programmes.

“What we foresee is actually an acceleration of the adoption of the e-AWB, but in parallel we will be working on developing a standard for ONE Record,” Hourcade told Asia Cargo News.

IATA has set as its goal 68% e-AWB share for this coming year, sharply up from this year’s 51%, says head of digital cargo Henk Mulder, who also outlined aggressive plans for ONE Record for the coming year and beyond.

ONE Record is a way of carrying the information for a single shipment record in a digital wallet which all interested parties can access along with their own data. It is flexible and adapted to the coming e-commerce environment and will be forced through the industry quickly, according to Mulder.

“We don’t have a choice,” said Mulder, when outlining plans described as “aggressive” for standards.

Mulder foresees proof of concept to be ready in time for the next World Cargo Symposium in March. Six months later, at September’s Digital Cargo Conference, he expects to have the prototypes running. “By March 2019, we should have a standard,” said Mulder.

And for Asia, this is not likely to be too much to digest.

“We foresee in Asia a better adoption and faster deployment of the new digital processes,” said Hourcade. The region, she pointed out, leads the way in use of the e-AWB, and Cathay Pacific is already involved with ONE Record.

Interactive Cargo, which is already under development, is likely to move apace in the coming year, although Hourcade acknowledges that IATA “[needs] to prepare the industry to have the right standards and certification process for the use censors, etc.”

Interactive Cargo is about collecting piece-level real-time data to track and manage cargo. Why it is so profound in its likely implications is that in the era of e-commerce it is a great tool, one which shippers are making a requirement of.

“This is going to re-shape the way we transport and the way we communicate with air cargo along the whole process,” Hourcade said. She declined to give a specific timeline for these changes, pointing to issues with time, money and expertise that are likely to delay it.

Currently, she told reporters, the process is not done uniformly. There is also a very complicated legal issue about who actually owns the data which devices collect; a working group is looking into this and other issues.

Also in the cards is the Air Cargo Incident Database (ACID), which is moving into its next phase and looking at the feasibility of accumulating data on incidents worldwide on a single database to help improve safety standards.

The industry is already supportive of this, with 74% of those who took part in an IATA survey supporting it and 64% saying that they would be willing to share data. The top three requirements from those who would share data are simplicity, data accuracy and quality and data protection, said Hourcade.

This is just the start of a much deeper process, with IATA also looking at transforming airlines’ use of online services, e-docs, cyber security, the cloud, Big Data, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, augmented and virtual reality, robotics, biometrics, drones and others.

One of the most widely discussed technologies is drones, particularly in their potential for last-mile deliveries.

Balancing this, IATA representatives say, is a lack of confidence in a number of issues, such as the use of drones in urban areas, which the industry needs to consider ahead of drones having a more prominent role. IATA, though, is clear that this is a new wing of the industry, and one which the industry needs to prepare for.

By Michael Mackey

Correspondent | Geneva