Corsair signs up for Pathfinder

France-based long-haul airline Corsair has become a user of ECS Group’s software tracking service, Pathfinder.

Pathfinder offers airline users real-time transparency on the status of their shipments.

The web-based track-and-trace system was developed by ECS Group’s in-house Cargo Digital Factory team in 2019 and the software was recently made available for carriers whether or not they have a GSSA contract with ECS.

Corsair, which specialises in connections from France to the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean, Africa and Montreal in Canada, is the first airline to sign up to Pathfinder as an ‘individual service module’.

Jean Ceccaldi, managing director of AeroCargo by ECS Group, informed: “This is the first time we are implementing Pathfinder as an add-on option to our GSSA contract, and not only as part of the TCM [Total Cargo Management] package.

“We are proud that one of our oldest, and certainly among the most consistent customers can now enjoy the full benefit of our best-in-class tracking solution.

“We have been the exclusive GSSA for Corsair since 1986, and that is an exceptional record within ECS Group.”

Dimitri Arnaudin, director digital & innovation at ECS Group, observed: “Pathfinder will celebrate its fifth anniversary in August of this year.

“Our mission is to provide the air cargo industry with the ultimate real-time shipment tracking solution, offering full shipment information at a single glance.

“We have grown our Pathfinder customer base and continuously enhanced the product to include features such as in-flight geolocation (map view) and notifications to customers. As a result, our solution is currently one of the best on the market.

“With this tool, our airline customers, can now offer a best-in-class service to forwarders,” he insisted.

Adrien Chauvière, cargo manager at Corsair, remarked: “The need for complete shipment journey visibility has skyrocketed in importance in recent years.

“Our customers want to know where their shipments are at any given time and expect us to deliver at least the same standard of information that they are used to when privately ordering goods online.

“The situation in the air cargo industry is still very fragmented, and until we switched to Pathfinder, much of our tracking process was carried out by phone or email.

“The process was largely manual, time-consuming, and far from seamless, let alone capable of providing real-time information.”

Best design
Chauvière continued: “Of all the possible alternatives on the market, Pathfinder stood out as the best option with the best design.

“It lives up to the excellent software quality we are used to from ECS Group’s Cargo Digital Factory solution suite.

“All Corsair destinations – including our trucking-only locations – are uploaded in the system.

“Pathfinder has proven to be an additional element of confidence for our customers and has greatly increased customer satisfaction.”

Looking for further expansion
Meanwhile, in February, the ECS Group confirmed that it was back on the acquisition trail following a break in activity due to the Covid crisis.

The GSSA had announced three takeover deals in the three months prior to then and executive chairman Adrien Thominet said that there would be more deals in the pipeline.