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    Vol. 13 No. 28                      THE AIR CARGO NEWS THOUGHT LEADER                             Wednesday March 26, 2014



Aer Lingus Cargo Ad

IATA Digital Ready For Primetime?


      Late last month on February 26th, IATA released the 2nd Edition of its Cargo XML Manual and Toolkit.
      Add this latest entry to a number of manuals published by IATA, some of them well known and recognized, such as the IATA Dangerous Goods Regulations.
      Cargo XML is priced at a hefty $999 ($649 for members).
      Given the fiasco—there is no other reasonable term for it—IATA has encountered with its EasyDGR SAAS in-house solution, the first (and likely last) electronic product with which IATA had targeted shippers, it is not unreasonable to wonder about IATA’s ability to take their cargo standards into the digital age.
      While the Cargo XML Manual and Toolkit is based on the CEFACT standards brought forward by the United Nations, and incorporates the requirements of other significant stakeholders such as the World Customs Organization, IATA’s claim that its XML Manual is ‘multimodal’ in application is probably more wishful thinking than fact.
      Firstly, when you add it all up, IATA’s publications tend to come at significant cost.
      For example, by comparison, the modal regulations for European road transport, the ADR, are published biannually and go for about $60 USD and the maritime regulations, the IMDG code, is also published biannually and sells for $49 USD; CFR regulations cost between $42 and $55 USD.
      The IATA DGR costs a whopping $319 USD while the Airport Handling Manual goes for $579 USD in its printed version and the combo of printed manual and CD for $1,145 USD.
      It’s worth noting that the Labelmaster AirShipper is a reasonable, alternate manual for the purpose of air shipping—and it goes for $85 USD.
      Since IATA is or has not been on the best terms with stakeholders from other modes of transport, and even with organizations from within the air transport industry, such as FIATA, there is reasonable doubt that an IATA manual would be recognized by anyone other than the ‘usual suspects’ or IATA’s strategy partners, member airlines, and the few IATA-friendly governmental stakeholders.
      Last but not least, IATA has lost considerable in-house expertise and knowledge in the last few years, and given their poor track record with EasyDGR and E-AWB implementation, their move to claim expert and standard-governing recognition outside the air transport industry shows considerable chutzpah.
      That a number of IT solution providers—among them Kewill, New Age Software Solution, Hans Infomatic, GLS HK, Mercator, Parse2, and Hexaware Technologies—have already licensed the IATA XML standards, does not mean that others from outside the air transport industry will consider doing the same.
      Why a player not directly affiliated with the air transport core business—such as GHA’s and others—should purchase Cargo XML from IATA rather than simply adopting the CEFACT and WCO requirements remains a bit of a mystery.
      Ironically, recognition of IATA e-standards undoubtedly requires support from stakeholders IATA has managed to antagonize in the past few years, such as the IMO (International Maritime Organization), FIATA, IFALPA, and ACI as well as some regulatory bodies.
      For the record, IATA Dangerous Goods Regulations (DGR), which are undoubtedly the “field manual for DG transport within the airline industry” are almost never recognized as a legal standard by CAA’s and their like.
      The bottom line is that it is always the user’s responsibility to ensure that in utilizing the IATA DGR they meet the requirements of the legal foundation, the ICAO Technical Instructions that are published—surprise—also biannually.
      The latter is a more arduous thought than one would assume, since the language quality of IATA’s foreign language editions at times leaves room for improvement, to say the least.
      Furthermore, for all these foreign language editions of IATA manuals, IATA is careful to spell out in the foreword than only the English version is legally binding, which by itself is not even correct, since with the exception of a few states which have elevated IATA manuals to be incorporated into local legislation, compliance with IATA regulations is only a contractual obligation stipulated by the IATA standard contract of carriage.
      Binding in a legal sense is usually only the applicable publication from ICAO or other governing body.
      One should, in this context, not forget that IATA is not a regulator but an industry association, so it is not unfair to say that IATA in drafting standards is comparable to the American Automobile Association (AAA) drafting highway transport rules in the US.
      It is hard to imagine that the very stakeholders recently retired IATA Director General Giovanni Bisignani slammed as “being on the wrong track,” “hindering business and trade” and “bringing forward unsustainable pricing levels” as well as “unduly burdening the air transport industry” will now do a 180-degree somersault and adopt any IATA manual as a binding standard.
      IATA’s pricing models and the fiasco with its EasyDGR SAAS solution might cause some players to carefully examine this latest offering.
      We may want to keep in mind the communication IATA sent out to former EasyDGR users more than nine months after the functionality of this product ceased:
      “However,” IATA wrote, “ongoing DGR rules changes and amendments have made it impossible to properly update the system logic used to validate that shipper’s declarations have been correctly created.
      “As safety is paramount, the inability for the underlying system to assure this accuracy forces us to take this drastic step.”
      You can translate the above as: the rules were too complicated or EasyDGR was not capable of handling the rules.
      Since EasyDGR was develeloped by IATA, it’s hard to blame someone else.
      Indeed it can not be taken too lightly that IATA, an organization with a considerable track record in the drafting and development of standards whilst continuously pushing for further implementation of E-freight and subsequent cost savings ended up describing EasyDGR, their own system, as “unsafe.”
      It is also noteworthy that competing IT products, among commercial solutions used by IATA member airlines, seem not to have been plagued with the inability to put the changed rules into system logic, such as the FedEx ShipManager as well as the DGM and Labelmaster software solutions.
      Both FedEx as a member carrier and DGM as a training partner are affiliated with IATA.
      So one may wonder why IATA was seemingly unable to draw upon this expertise…
Jens


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