Air Cargo Management

Cathay Pacific Cargo takes the lead on two new Cargo iQ milestones

Cathay Pacific Cargo hopes to bring greater transparency to the cargo journey after taking the lead on two new Cargo iQ milestones in Hong Kong.

The company has become one of the first carriers to pioneer two new milestones in the Cargo iQ ‘Master Operating Plan’ (MOP). These milestones are the FOW (freight out of warehouse control) and FIW (freight into warehouse control). They aim to offer better measurement of ground handling performance in the handover between the ramp operating handlers and the cargo terminal, and vice versa, for imports and exports, at air waybill (AWB) level.

The milestones are now operational at the Cathay Pacific Cargo Terminal in Hong Kong, with a view to rolling them out across the network.

Cargo iQ is a not-for-profit membership group supported by IATA composed of airlines, freight forwarders, ground handling agents, trucking companies and IT providers who work together to bring standardisation and transparency to the air cargo journey.

As part of that, the Cargo iQ MOP, which has been endorsed by IATA as a recommended industry practice, describes the standard end-to-end process of transporting air cargo from shipper to consignee. These two new messaging standards, FIW and FOW, in the end-to-end air freight shipment journey bring the total number of milestones in the MOP to 20.

“We are delighted to be an early adopter of these two new milestones because we are dedicated to enhancing the quality control on our handling processes with the accountable parties,” said Cathay’s GM cargo service delivery Frosti Lau, who is on the Cargo iQ board. “That’s why we are working closely with our counterparts to launch these milestones so we can better monitor the performance of the handover of shipments between our ramp handling and cargo terminal subsidiaries at Hong Kong International Airport.”

These are the fully owned subsidiaries HAS (Hong Kong Airport Services), and CPSL (Cathay Pacific Services), which operates the Cathay Pacific Cargo Terminal.

CPSL head of quality Aldous Chung commented: “Information visibility has become a prerequisite in air cargo. CPSL pursues continuous service enhancement and looks for ways to refine our procedures to enhance the reliability and efficiency of our operations. By implementing the FIW and FOW milestones, we are enhancing the transparency of terminal operations and this will allow us to better measure the performance for continuous improvement.”

Previously, the handover between the ramp and the warehouse needed users to compute the timings based on the ULD handover time taken from the raw data of the warehouse operating system. Now the same system can share that information at air waybill level for every flight. This system enhancement was deployed in May and the FIW and FOW messaging was activated at the start of July.

Cathay Pacific Cargo is now trialling these milestones in its own systems through an interface developed by Global Logistics System with a view to using the additional visibility from these milestones to measure and enhance performance to deliver a better service to customers.

“With this information, the industry will be able to identify pain points and make vital improvements to operational processes,” said Cargo iQ manager implementation and quality assurance Laura Rodriguez. “It also gives us, for the first time, the possibility to visualise the complete warehouse process from start to end within Cargo iQ.

“With its commitment to implement these new events, Cathay Pacific and its partners in Hong Kong are reinforcing the value of monitoring the point of handover from warehouse to ramp and vice-versa. We are currently supporting all our members in the implementation of these milestones and we look forward to seeing the benefits of uptake on an industry-wide scale.”

Sign In

Lost your password?