At a time when the industry is increasingly adopting sustainable and cost-effective practices to enhance operational efficiency, International Air Transport Association (IATA) views this as the first step towards a paper-free air cargo, involving fewer stakeholders.
The air waybill is the most important transportation document in the cargo operations, which contains the details of the shipper, consignee, airport of origin/destination, number of pieces, weight and the nature of goods.
Currently, the cargo industry relies heavily on paper documentation, which results in increasing freight costs and lengthening processing and transportation time. A freight shipment requires over 30 different paper documents and the paper air way-billing system requires that each shipment carries one such document whereas under the E-AWB system, an electronic contract between SriLankan Cargo and the freight forwarding customer replaces paper documentation.
The new system allows the airlines and freight forwarders to sign a single standard agreement once with IATA to enter into e-AWB agreements with all parties, without having to sign numerous bilateral agreements.
Initiated by the IATA, as a progressive solution, E-AWB avoids repeating data keying and reduces cargo delays due to missing or illegible paper AWBs. It also allows one to detect errors prior to the submission of physical freight, access Real Time AWB information and track status of the shipments.
Absence of paper usage eliminates the cost of purchasing and printing of paper, space for storage and archiving and noticeably reduces the waiting time for processing papers. In terms of data safety, E-AWB has been proven the more reliable option as the automated system facilitates error detection and cuts down the risk of losing documents.
E-AWB system comes with a regulatory compliance, authorized by international treaties regulating air cargo, and upholds the unified quality management standards set down by the industry. It is also a sustainable option that contributes to the environment conservation through reducing paper consumption.
According to IATA statistics, by the end of 2012, the global penetration of e-AWB on feasible trade lanes was around 6% and its vision is to achieve 100% e-AWB on feasible trade lanes by the end of 2015.
SDF
