Customs procedures, high cargo demand at FRA causes slowdowns

Customs procedures for imports along with high cargo volumes are causing delays at Frankfurt Airport (FRA). [caption id="attachment_97719" align="alignright" width="450"] (Photo/Frankfurt International Airport)[/caption] With FRA seen as a bottleneck, some airfreight operators, including Austria-based cargo-partner, have begun diverting flights to other nearby airports. San Francisco-based forwarder Flexport alerted its customers that airport terminals across Europe were congested due to an early peak in the holiday season and staff shortages, with problems at FRA being particularly acute. Exacerbating the general peak season congestion is the implementation of customs regulations at FRA. To avoid the slowdown, freight forwarders are diverting away from the airport and signing up for deferred routings into Germany. Terminal operators at other airports are hiring additional temporary staff, implementing new processes and rethinking their infrastructure to cope with this influx, according to Flexport’s Nov. 16 market update. To avoid adding further logistical problems, Austria-based cargo-partner began diverting its weekly flights between Zhengzhou (CGO) and FRA to Cologne (CGN) instead, according to the logistics provider’s Nov. 21 LinkedIn post. The problems at FRA stem more from the volume of shipments coming through the airport and not the implementation of the customs code, according to Patrik Tschirch, managing director and CEO at LUG aircargo handling. “These custom rules in itself are not a threat,” Tschirch told Air Cargo World. “They're actually a big opportunity for all of us and they will actually be good for Frankfurt as a whole in terms of being finally more digitized than we are today.” Changes to European customs procedures were launched in 2016 with the introduction of the Union Customs Code (UCC). Under the UCC, communications between customs authorities and businesses are going digital. In 2018, the Frankfurt Airport Customs Office worked with Air Cargo Community Frankfurt, an organization made up of airlines, freight forwarders and cargo handlers to design a system that would work for FRA. As a result, the airport’s operator, Fraport, and software company Dakosy launched the FRA-OS/Import digital platform, which allows stakeholders to report their shipments to the customs warehouses throughout the customs zone at Frankfurt Airport, the companies said in a joint statement. FRA is the first major European cargo hub s to offer the system. The deadline for implementing the regulations expired in 2021. Freight forward er s and cargo handlers are currently in the onboarding process, according to Joachim von Winning, executive director at Air Cargo Community Frankfurt. “While all changes in processes have impacts on operations, these were well planned, and the impacts so far are limited and quickly reduced by FRA-OS/Import's capabilities,” von Winning told Air Cargo World. “Once fully operational, we expect more steady flows of import reducing process times and increasing throughput capacity. “Having said that, even minor impacts have effects on systems at capacity. The air cargo industry in Europe is at its limit. This is not limited to the major cargo hubs like Frankfurt but massive demand (especially imports) with limited uplift capacity concentrating on the main hubs down to the full consignee warehouses.” The FRA-OS/Import platform is also seen as an opportunity for change at the airport. “I believe that customs gave us a golden opportunity to move digitization forward at this airport because there's a lot of power inside the software that we could then use in terms of the messaging and transparency for all of us where we can streamline processes,” Tschirch said .

Customs procedures, high cargo demand at FRA causes slowdowns

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