A meeting held in Germany, comprising of Air Cargo & Logistics committee of the Board of Airline Representatives called BARIG, hit a milestone. The cargo city of Süd at the airport in Frankfurt was when re­presentatives of airlines sat together with high-ranking logistics representatives around one table for the first time to intensively discuss the measures that are necessary to sustain Germany’s performance as air cargo location.

 

The initiative’s urgency became clear in the last quarter of 2017, when an especially high air cargo volume stretched logistics companies and the infrastructure at Cargo City to their limits. Among the over 40 participants of the BARIG committee meeting was Felix Kreutel, divisional head of cargo for airport operator Fraport. He underlined the importance of constructive cooperation between all in­volved parties and emphasized that mutual standards for faster and more efficient processes must be established. He further assured that Fraport understands its role as enabling player and that the infrastructure must be optimized together.

 

In the long-run, this initiative may not only be beneficial to Frankfurt because whatever is developed at Europe’s largest air cargo location could also serve as a model for other airports in Germany.

 

Accordingly, Patrick Tschirch, managing director for LUG aircargo handling, pointed out that uniform national standards are in the absolute interest of dispatchers. In this context, digitalization plays a major role since air cargo processes are today still associated with an immense amount of paperwork. Tschirch therefore demanded the development of reliable and durable digital processes. An example of how things could function in the future is currently projected by Dakosy’s FAIR@Link system. Building on the digital solution for Hamburg’s harbor, the internet-based system assigns time slots for truck loading and unloading to dispatchers taking part in the project and simplifies the further processing of data from freight documents.

 

LUG and Frankfurt Cargo Services (FCS) have compulsorily introduced mandatory slot bookings for loading and unloading via the Fair@Link rampcontrolmodule at Frankfurt airport, three weeks after introduction, an acceptance rate of 60 % has already been recorded.