MIAMI – 21 May 2015. ACMG Senior Director Alan Hedge, attending the TIACA Executive summit, reports that at Thursday morning’s session on Advance Data, customs experts from multiple jurisdictions, including the U.S., Canada, and the EU, and from the World Customs Organization and ICAO presented their electronic cargo information systems status and answered questions about air cargo security and customs compliance.

For each country receiving cargo, the regulators’ goal is a “Single Window” customs and security paperless portal that would operate in “real time” from the beginning of a shipment’s routing.

The separate government initiatives are still in the pilot stage with participation in each pilot by a few selected integrators and carriers.

• The US CPB’s program, which aims at 2016 implementation, is no exception, and the Air Cargo Advance Screening (ACAS) NPRM is not yet complete for issue to the industry and the public for comment. If delivery of the NPRM and public comment period cannot accommodate the 1 November intermediate deadline set by CBP for mandatory use of ACE for all electronic cargo release and related entry summary filings, existing U.S. data pilots will likely be extended, but the U.S. representatives on the panel provided no guarantees.
• The EU’s program implementation is more deliberate, with an estimated completion date of 2018. Questions from the audience focused on worries of divergence of government requirements that would require large investments in IT systems. Regulators responded that they would all rely on the same “7+1” cargo manifest data fields.

A recurring discussion item was e-commerce, and a level playing field between mail and cargo. Postal procedures are still paper-based, and the shippers are not often “known”, yet forwarders and airlines may be required by law to reject a shipment that could theoretically be boarded on the same aircraft as mail!

Also discussed was the concern that smaller players (carriers, forwarders, and countries) be included in the dialog and be able to invest in the systems to tie them into a global advanced data cargo network.