Top 10 things overheard in Dallas at IATA’s World Cargo Symposium

IATA’s World Cargo Symposium 2018 is now history, but between the 13 separate, concurrent tracks and all the networking that was done by more than 1,100 delegates in Dallas a couple weeks ago, chances are there were several words of wisdom you may have missed, even if you had attended every day. As a refresher for those who may have missed the symposium, we at Air Cargo World have assembled some of our favorite moments from the event and shared them below as our top 10 remarks overheard at the sessions, workshops or on the exhibition hall floor during the four days of the event. Which one was your favorite moment? “Our biggest challenge today is getting perishable cargo from the plane to the cool-chain facility ASAP.” Despite all the technology that has been applied to the ground-handling aspect of air cargo, Kerry Galegher, seinor vice president of cargo for dnata's U.S. market, speaking at the WCS Perishables panel discussion, said the industry is still trying to solve the problem of handing off the cargo from the aircraft to the cool-chain facility. His fellow panelist, Burak Ömeroğlu, vice president of cargo sales in the Middle East for Turkish Airlines, however, said that better communication between airlines and forwarders should improve, so that airlines better understand the forwarders’ needs. “So maybe we should pose the question of, what is stopping us from innovating?” Bert Jorritsma, special cargo service delivery manager with Emirates SkyCargo, expressed his concern, during the session on non-pharmaceutical perishable s, over the direction of current conversations in perishables transport. He lamented that the industry is taking “baby steps” on the issue, which makes it “too slow.” As a result, he added, logistics operators may soon be cut out of the perishables chain if a more innovative operator emerges. “[Technology] is trying to answer the same question, ‘Where’s my stuff?’ In a rousing introduction to the ULD track sessions, ACL Airshop chief Steve Townes boiled the latest developments in the industry down to this simple statement. He also added, “I don’t mean where’s my pallet? I mean what’s on my pallet and why can’t I find it? And who has it?” The industry has come far, Townes said, but still has a lot of work ahead. “Keeping up with people, technology, money, facilities and so forth, is not an easy task,” he said. “But all of us in this room have the task of keeping up with that, and in fact getting ahead of it.” So where’s it all going? “I can tell you this: It’s going faster,” Townes said. “Just when you thought it was normal, everything is more chaotic with fast growth. Fast-growth markets always separate winners from losers.” Later, Townes gave a "fearless forecast" that, in 48 months or less, ACL “will have 65,000 to 70,000 ULDs in our fleet and will be located at 75 airports.” The company will add six new service hubs in 2018, he added, plus three repair stations in Bogota, Hong Kong and Liège. “We are now able to link two critical sets of data and increase trust between parties by making that data available to everyone, at all times.” On the floriculture beat, Jonas van Stekelenburg, head of cargo at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS), mentioned the launch its own data-sharing platform that will provide supply chains access to the status of associated real-time data regarding flower shipments, as part of the airport’s Smart Cargo Mainport Program. Soon, he said at the Perishables track, customers who receive a shipment of fresh-cut roses may be able to tell exactly where the flowers came from, how long the journey took and what condition they are in with just a glance at the air waybill (AWB). “The development and launch of this data sharing platform is a real example that we are doing ‘new stuff’ benefiting all stakeholders in the floriculture chain,” said Marcel de Nooijer, executive vice president at Air France-KLM, which collaborated on the program. “We need to create small environments where stakeholders see the added-value immediately.” Speaking on the Cargo Transformation track panel , Sara Van Gelder, the cargo and logistics development manager for Brussels Airport, discussed how new standards will be necessary to ensure that disjointed IT systems can interface with each other. Responding to the panel’s concern that small and medium-sized freight forwarders might fall behind without a standard for data exchanges, Van Gelder said, “The data elements and how to exchange will follow. I’m sure that by the time all of the communities are completely digitalized and paperless, there will be a language.” The biggest hurdles facing nearly all new technologies are the difficulty in establishing trust to share data with the entire supply chain. This was the near unanimous conclusion from attendees of the Horizon Innovation Forum, after attendees broke into smaller groups and discussed the opportunities, challenges and next steps to take regarding three of the most promising technological advances: blockchain, A.I. and IoT. For each, the groups identified promising uses of the technologies, especially in the form of item-level tracking, but added that building a business case for justifying the initial costs will be difficult. “Just say no.” Channeling the famous anti-drug campaign championed by former First Lady Nancy Reagan, the audience at the CEIV-Pharma Workshop said it’s high time cargo handlers and carriers stood up to shippers who expected premium service for pharmaceutical shipments that are labeled as general cargo. “They still expect cargo handlers and airlines to handle the shipment based on its packaging,” said Bruno Guella, the managing director at MVD Free Airport. Brussels Airport’s cargo manager Nathan de Valck said getting the entire airport community onboard with a hardline strategy has worked in Brussels. “We had to educate our whole community to apply that rule,” said de Valck. “Once you start doing that as a community, you really start educating the shippers.” “If I book an economy ticket, I can’t be allowed in business [class].” Adding to the same theme of “no free rides” for pharma shipments, Andrea Gruber, IATA’s head of special cargo, said at the CEIV-Pharma Workshop that communication goals should shift to explain to shippers that their shipments will not have access to the higher standards if they are shipped under general freight. “If those three groups aren’t working hand in hand, we aren’t going to make it.” At the E-commerce Panel Discussion during the Opening Plenary, Liam O'Sullivan director of operations with International Post Corporation (IPC), said handlers, cargo airlines and postal operations “will have to work very closely together” to handle the expected increase in cross-border e-commerce. “We expect by 2020 we will see a triplification of cross-border flow,” O’Sullivan said, adding that the current geographic composition of these movements is likely to experience a shake-up. “No, I don’t think we’re ready, the infrastructure doesn’t allow for it.” When asked about the industry’s readiness to handle the coming e-commerce onslaught, Lucas Kuehner, Panalpina’s global head of airfreight, made this honest, blunt assessment during the E-Commerce panel . “We experienced huge bottlenecks moving freight in Europe last year, particularly in Germany,” he explained, as the main European e-commerce cities of Frankfurt, Luxembourg and London all saw delays impact shipments during Europe’s most recent peak season. But he was still optimistic that smart application of technology, an area in which air cargo has lagged other industries, can help facilitate delivery speed. “This is also a call to arms — finally — so we have the reason we need to apply technology to this industry,” he said.

Top 10 things overheard in Dallas at IATA’s World Cargo Symposium

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