A View from the Board
Board member Lothar Moehle, Director AVSEC + Governance, Global Air Freight, DB Schenker
The year 2020 will surely remain in our memory for a very long time. In one way or another, the entire world has been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic and the related challenges in our professional lives.
The global air cargo industry has shown tremendous resilience to cope with the challenges this pandemic has heaped on us. Moreover, it has shown that the air cargo industry is more important than ever – often being the only lifeline for some companies. Lasting impacts will change the industry, combined with an ever-increasing necessity to provide true quality services – which is of course the ultimate core activity of what Cargo iQ works on with its members.
In defiance of these challenges, Cargo iQ has continued to be “inside” the activities of all members, planning, controlling, and continuously improving the entire logistics chain of the air cargo industry from house-to-house and airport-to-airport. The Cargo iQ management team and the members' representatives in the working groups have now developed an additional possibility to book shipments with better flexibility.
Planning, booking and evaluation a shipment on a specific flight have always been at the center of what Cargo iQ does. In addition, it will be possible in the future to book a time-defined shipment services, where the ultimate commitment from the carrier is, to have the shipment available at the destination airport at the promised date/time. This will provide the airline with more flight options to actually move a shipment. Members have set up pilot trials to test the theory behind this concept and the results will be available soon.
In addition, we are working on the concept of care protocols, for an additional level of control over a shipment’s care conditions on top of existing quality assurance programs, through transparency of the planning and execution of care actions. For example, healthcare shipments require that certain product temperature are maintained. Under care protocols such a shipment would be planned for storage conditions as well as movement and monitored on when it enters and leaves certain controlled locations within the facilities of the various providers. There is no doubt, that in particular, healthcare and pharma shipments will be in our focus for the foreseeable future, when available vaccines have to be distributed to all corners of the world.
These initiatives show that Cargo iQ, as an organization, helps its members to reach ever-improving quality levels, is more relevant than ever; despite - or should we say because of - all the challenges the industry is facing at present and in the near future. Therefore, everyone in this industry should and will continue to support Cargo iQ and encourage its service partners to join this great organization.