It’s now one year on from the official inception of the unprecedented coming together of virtually the entire air cargo supply chain as represented by four major industry associations – IATA, FIATA, TIACA and the GSF. A major step forward for the industry and one virtually unheard of in any global industry, the new body has been hard at work fitting the pieces of the puzzle together. Donald Urquhart reports.
GACAG: Have you heard of it? It’s entirely likely that although this new industry association represents the interests of the breadth of the air cargo supply chain many readers will have no idea what this GACAG animal is all about. If you have heard of it you’re probably unsure as to what its agenda is and what if anything it has accomplished. It’s understandable, because the unwieldy sounding GACAG, or Global Air Cargo Advisory Group, has only been up and running for barely a year now with much of the focus on setting up the structure and getting down to work. At the recent World Cargo Symposium (WCS) in Kuala Lumpur the delegates were asked, essentially that very question. The answer sent a stir in the order of ‘shock and awe’ through the packed ballroom – a full 84 per cent of the delegates responded in the negative. They simply had no real idea what was up with this GACAG.
To be fair however, GACAG which was first conceived and announced in November 2010, only became official with the signing of a memorandum of understanding during last year’s WCS in Istanbul in March 2011. And crucially, only 40 per cent of those attending this year’s event were at the Istanbul symposium.
The numbers didn’t surprise anyone who has been active in the nascent organisation, with the International Air Transport Association (IATA) head of cargo, Des Vertannes explaining it was “a year of trying to come together and we have worked diligently to get to a unified position.”
Chairman of the new organisation, Michael Steen (concurrently The International Air Cargo Association (TIACA) chairman), adds that this collaboration between the four leading organisations in the air cargo supply chain is “itself a unique happening in this industry.”
So what is GACAG?
Among the four founding members, aside from TIACA and IATA, the remaining two are the International Federation of Freight Forwarders Associations (FIATA) and the Global Shippers Forum (GSF). It is clearly a unique endeavor of significant scale – each of the four are significant associations in their own rite – and yet GACAG has no resources of its own and is solely supported by the resources of each association.
The agreement between them commits TIACA, GSF, FIATA and IATA to work together to look at their current positions on key issues and to try to find common ground to best protect and promote the interests of the air cargo industry, the organisations and its customers. This includes looking at each association’s respective resources committed to industry affairs and figuring out how to make the most effective use of the existing and growing relationships they have with relevant government departments and other regulatory bodies. Putting this all together was no small task and the founders had no precedent to look to for best practices, and as Steen notes, “a lot of people haven’t necessarily appreciated the difficulty in making that happen.” Specifically GACAG is driven by a steering committee drawn from the four founding groups – from TIACA, Steen and Oliver Evans; from IATA, Des Vertannes and Glyn Hughes; from FIATA, Jean-Claude Delen and Bill Gottlieb; and from the GSF, Chris Welsh and Peter Gatti – all not exactly lightweights in the industry.
Steen says that once the idea was established it was time to create the entity, set up the ground rules, the principles, how it was going to work. “It all takes time and of course you have to make sure its supported by the right legal principles.” Next it was time to narrow down areas of focus so as to not waste precious resources or spread the organisation too thin.
“We wanted to make sure we focus on areas where we can have influence – we wanted to make sure we had priority setting in place, where we could tackle issues that were extremely important for the industry and also we could deliver success,” he says. Once the four focus areas – security, e-commerce, customs and trade facilitation and sustainability – were settled on and endorsed by the industry at the Istanbul WCS last year, it was time to populate the working groups for each of the four focus areas and get to work. That process took a good 8-10 months to put into place and get up and running
“People from all four associations are top notch experts in what they are doing and bringing their perspectives together we have our vision, we are analysing what is good about the current projects and what we can support with whatever priorities we think,” Vertannes adds. While the group says it focused on these four key areas so as to not be overwhelmed by the plethora of issues in the industry, Vertannes is apologetic on the speed of progress, saying: “We perhaps thought we could do a little bit more, faster than we perhaps have done, but once we got into the process we realised the gigantic scope of this and therefore are taking smaller bites but we definitely want to move this along as quickly as possible. “
Progress report
While it could easily be expected that since the organisation has only just come together and formed the structures and filled the working groups a few short months ago progress would be sparse, but this is far from the case according to the participants.
“Last year in the WCS it was really about the commitment, but while it’s only really been up and running in the last six months, to be fair a lot of progress has been made,” said Welsh.
In detailing the progress to-date at this year’s WCS, IATA’s Vertannes noted that the steering committee made a commitment last year that in 12 months time, “we would stand accountable to all of you in this room as to what we have done.”
In 2011 the most important issue, as Vertannes notes was “security, security, security”. “We did engage with regulators and other bodies and particularly with the US Transport Security Administration (TSA) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), as well as other significant regulators around the world.”
As part of this work GACAG also issued a position paper on a standard ‘Consignment Security Declaration’ for air cargo shipments, “because we believe that harmonised, consistent provision of data for carrying out risk assessment is an absolute necessity.” Articulating this position was also important in light of the move by the TSA towards requiring advanced manifest information as part of its Air Cargo Advance Screening (ACAS) pilot. The group also issued another position paper on security programmes the industry feels are needed, as well as monitoring the security protocols that are emerging from the various regulators around the world.
On e-commerce Vertannes noted that everything the industry does under the electronic agenda must be done with a common agenda. “We cannot have a fragmented vision because the supply chain needs this to succeed,” he notes. “We have taken this on to ensure we establish a roadmap that achieves the targets the industry desires,” he adds. A key aspect the e-commerce task force is targeting is to work to bring the ecommerce agenda into the BRIC countries which have become so important in creating GDP growth in world trade. Another key area is developing a common vision for e-AWB transactions and migrating standards over to XML, as well as securing agreement on the development of multilateral agreements in order to facilitate electronic trade between the parties.
On customs and trade facilitation the working group held a key meeting with the then-CBP commissioner, Alan Bersin and is also working on issues such as customs automation aiming to develop a roadmap so as to improve customs and trade facilitation. Sustainability also saw a flurry of activity, with substantial lobbying effort in terms of the controversial European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS).
A key part of the sustainability working group activity also revolves around raising the profile of the industry amongst governments and the general public focusing not only on the environmental track record of the industry, but also goals and strategies for future performance. “The general public doesn’t realise the value of the air cargo supply chain in bringing value to their lives,” says Welsh.
Early successes
It may sound trivial, but rest assured it is a success that cannot be underestimated – achieving a common vision and complete alignment within the group. To understand why it’s such an achievement one only need to look back at the history between IATA and FIATA – while long time partners, this relationship has seen its fair share of ups and downs.
For FIATA’s Gottlieb the GACAG has “opened up a new window for us to achieve new partnerships. We’re able to sit down and look at all the programs of the global air cargo supply chain. We’re all sitting as a neutral body and trying to dissect and assess how initiatives have been successful and where they’ve faltered – we’ve come together to get a common vision, a common goal,” he says.
While noting that FIATA has had a long history of working with IATA, Gottlieb notes that that cooperation has “had a few bumps along the way, but we realise how important it is to work with our airline partners, but also with our customers, the shippers and also the other members of the supply chain – airports, ground handlers, etc and really come up with a roadmap that will take us not just for the next few months or years but will set us on a path for the next decade based on the changes we make today so that the industry can benefit from the efficiencies going forward.” Another very crucial success has been the response from the regulators. A key meeting last December with the US TSA and CBP clearly demonstrated to the GACAG team that they were on the right track. “They were really pleasantly taken aback at the fact they were meeting the whole supply chain,” Gottlieb said of the US officials. “Everyone was singing from the same hymn book and the music was rather sweet and I think the song was rather well received,” he says.
Indeed, as Delta Cargo’s Neel Shah pointed out: “That dialogue and the cooperation and collaboration with the Department of Homeland Security today is unprecedented and it’s a lot of the work that GACAG is doing, as well as the support groups that go along with it have really taken the conversation to another level.” This includes work that Airlines for America have been undertaking as well, he added.
Adding his view, Michael Woodall, head of Aviation Security Regulatory Reform, at the UK Department for Transport noted that the problem with the air cargo supply chain has always been that “you do not represent yourselves as a unified voice to the regulators. Any organisation, whether it be GACAG or any other one, that is able put forward a holistic, joined-up, robust, pragmatic and politically acceptable view is to be welcomed,” he says. It simply makes the regulators job easier he notes, because rather than talking with many associations with fragmented views, regulators can speak with one organisation and have a realistic debate, Woodall added.
The success in ratcheting up the degree of meaningful interaction with the US security departments cannot be underestimated Steen notes, saying they are “discussions that had never taken place before.” Through these meetings, GACAG has been able to share subject expertise from the industry side on how processes ought to be structured.” But recognising that GACAG is dealing with different governments that may not necessarily looking at the same priorities and currently there is no single security standard for global aviation, Steen says the group has been working closely with the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) as they are in the position to drive standardisation and harmonisation in regulations.
“We 100 per cent support ICAO’s principals around security and I think just getting to that point is a major achievement in itself. You have to recognise that we are an advisory group, we advise lawmakers to make sure we can put the best practice in place and that takes time in itself. Just educating lawmakers about how the global supply chain works and why security needs to be multilayered, multifaceted is importantand that’s what we’re doing,” he says.
Looking ahead
While there have been tangible signs of success despite GACAG’s tender age, there is plenty of work still to be done and it’s clear no one in GACAG is under any other illusion. A key task that has some urgency is the need to communicate with the industry, to not just raise the awareness of what GACAG is doing, but to solicit views from the industry, Hughes notes. “Part of the objective that we have to fulfill is to be transparent and if we want to be transparent we have to be out there and be prepared to hear whatever the people want to tell us,” he says adding that this means face-to-face interaction at the grass roots level.
“This is work in progress we have a lot more to do and we have to listen. It’s important not to sound as if we’ve gotten there, this is the beginning of a journey,” says Vertannes. “We’re talking about a unified industry working collaboratively to achieve the same set of goals – not set by any of the founding members, but by the assembly in the room. If we want to pursue this as an industry then what we’ve got to try and do is make sure everybody in the room is going to contribute to those achievements. It’s not just for the few, it’s for the global industry,” he emphasises. Another key step is to “plug the gap,” as Vertannes says, in reference to the lack of airport participation, for instance. He notes that moves to bring the Airports Council International (ACI) into the GACAG fold are ongoing.
For Steen more industry involvement is crucial. “We need more involvement from more groups, regional groups, local groups. And while the response we’re getting from regulators, lawmakers and others is very positive, there’s much more that needs to be done. It’s a collaborative effort and sometimes that takes a little more time, but I think we have shown some tremendous progress in the first year,” he says.
These accomplishments, he adds, were “based on trust, based on commitment and based on focus. And I think we’ve all been positively surprised at the collaborative dialogue, no matter how difficult the problem may have been, no matter how much animosity there may have been over certain contentious issues – what we’ve really done here is create a DNA for collaboration within our industry.”
