Alexis von Hoensbroech, CEO of Lufthansa Cargo, has described the air freight industry’s sluggish progress with electronic air waybills as “embarrassing”.
“People started talking about them in the late nineties, but it took more than a decade to actually turn the idea into a product,” von Hoensbroech said at the Air Cargo China event in Shanghai.
“Now in 2018, we’ve just achieved 50% e-AWB penetration. This is 20 years after we started talking about it. It’s a really embarrassing performance in terms of implementation.”
According to von Hoensbroech, combining greater e-AWB implementation with automated quotations could lead to the automation of 70% of all air cargo transactions, saving the industry between $1-2 billion.
It would also improve efficiency by allowing the centralisation of data once paperwork is digitised. “Today the freight moves and the data moves with it, but this is the most primitive way of doing it,” von Hoensbroech said.
However, he did not foresee carriers doing more business directly with shippers, suggesting that there would still be a need for online freight forwarders to provide forwarding services.
(Source: The Loadstar)
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