Airfreight e-booking pace picks up as JAS, Saudia Cargo sign on to platforms

More freight forwarders and airlines are signing on to e-booking platforms that allow for dynamic pricing and instant quotations for airfreight shipments. Most recently, U.S.-based 3PL JAS Worldwide completed the full launch of WebCargo e-booking software in its system at the end of the first quarter, and Middle Eastern carrier Saudia Cargo signed on to offer digital booking through the Germany-headquartered platform cargo.one in an agreement announced April 14. [caption id="attachment_94829" align="alignright" width="450"] Saudia Cargo will begin offering capacity for digital booking through cargo.one during the second quarter of 2021. Photo: Saudia Cargo[/caption] The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a rapid increase in digitalization and demand for electronic booking of airfreight, with the number of electronic bookings made on WebCargo — which offers rate searchability across more than 300 airlines — growing by around 1,000% year-over-year during the pandemic, WebCargo’s co-founder and CEO Manel Galindo told Air Cargo World . The primary advantages of digital booking on these platforms include real-time price information through dynamic pricing capability, allowing for better rate management, a faster booking process, and increased visibility and analytic possibilities for shipment data, executives at WebCargo and JAS said. “With the COVID-19 pandemic, airfreight capacity is extremely tight and market dynamics are changing overnight on certain trade lanes very frequently,” Mario Tenebruso, vice president of air freight for the Americas at JAS, told Air Cargo World . “Having quick access to rates and to book capacity instantly, especially for ad-hoc shipments and to secure a booking for our customer, is certainly a benefit if we can do this through one platform like WebCargo, especially since such fluid market dynamics make it pretty challenging sometimes to get access to capacity.” The JAS agreement with WebCargo was fully launched at the beginning of the first quarter, Tenebruso said, and extends for a two-year period. In the EMEA region, Saudia Cargo’s capacity will become available for booking on the more European-focused cargo.one digital platform during the second quarter. This will allow forwarders to book capacity for routes across the Middle East, Africa, Europe, Asia and the U.S. Many of the 15 airlines offering capacity through cargo.one currently are based in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, but the e-booking platform in late March also announced its first partnership with a North American carrier , Air Canada Cargo. JAS is also among the freight forwarders that have signed on to cargo.one’s platform. Tenebruso said other regional divisions of JAS sometimes pursue new technologies independently. “We are, of course, also interested in what other technologies are out there,” Tenebruso said. “And sometimes that’s also good, because we could possibly also learn from some other technologies.” Given the extreme year-over-year growth in digital bookings during the pandemic, WebCargo’s Galindo is optimistic that the accelerated adoption of cargo e-booking will continue. Currently, he estimated that around 22% of the global airfreight market is available for digital booking, up from 0% in 2015. “My feeling is that we will finalize this year with perhaps 35% or 36% of the market digitalized, so we have many airlines working on that,” Galindo said. “I hope that we arrive to 2024 or 2025 with 60% of the market digitalized.”

Airfreight e-booking pace picks up as JAS, Saudia Cargo sign on to platforms

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