In around 24 weeks, on 1 January 2026, the air cargo industry should commence making a fundamental shift in one of its most critical elements – the exchange of data.
That is when IATA ONE Record will become the preferred standard for data exchange across all air cargo stakeholders, including but not limited to freight forwarders, carriers, ground handling agents and IT solution providers.
From this date, the existing Cargo-IMP and Cargo-XML standards will also enter a state of containment, signifying no further development, updates or changes to the technical standards for these data formats.
It is clearly time for all segments of the industry to act and move towards supporting the new standards. If you are not already well advanced with ONE Record, it is time to move very fast.
The topic of industry support of ONE Record is an interesting one. Some airlines seem to imply that it is the forwarders who need to move first and become compliant.
Some forwarders and system providers indicate that without adequate airline support of ONE Record upfront, it is difficult for them to justify the resource commitments necessary to move to ONE Record.
But thankfully, there is a group of airlines that are well advanced in their ability to meet the 1 January 2026 implementation for ONE Record.
There are also forwarder operating systems that are well placed for their development to be ready for 1 January 2026, or may even be ready now. A number of ONE Record production pilots are either underway, have been completed, or are planned to be undertaken imminently.
Within the airline cohort of ONE Record supportive airlines, there are a few to whom the entire industry owes a large debt of gratitude for their relentless effort in defining the standards and driving the program forward.
This gratitude extends to the other members of the working groups that have spent considerable time and effort working through the marathon process of establishing a new standard for the complex and mission-critical process that is air cargo data exchange.
The IATA team must also be recognised and thanked for their efforts in navigating the complexities of such a fundamental change.
Essential transition
There can be no doubt that a move to ONE Record is an absolute must for this industry. This is a turning point for air cargo, and the time is now. The current Cargo-IMP standards (under which the vast majority of today’s air cargo data is created) was endorsed in 1975. Yes, you read right – 1975.
And while the Cargo-IMP standards have served the industry relatively well over the last 50 years, many of the message types are fundamentally no longer fit for purpose.
The FWB (Master AWB data) as just one message type, has been enhanced from Version 1 to Version 17, to help support the plethora of industry changes that have occurred over that time, and which the data needs to support.
Many of these changes have been driven by mandatory regulatory compliance enhancements for global air cargo security and customs reporting. Enhancing systems across our industry is complex, time-consuming and costly.
And this time and effort will only increase into the future, with even more changes being necessary to support ongoing new compliance needs. With continually increasing air cargo volumes, we need a better way with the enhanced data capability and flexibility of ONE Record to adequately support the air cargo industry into the future.
In addition to the actual data itself, there is also complexity in how today’s data must be distributed. Through multiple potential points of failure, all too often, data may not be where it needs to be and when it needs to be there.
It is not at all uncommon for this to only become evident at the eleventh hour when the cargo is lodged for export. In an industry that is constantly under severe time constraints by its nature, this adds unwanted financial and human resource overheads, often to the forwarder, eroding their efficiency and profit.
The data distribution and data success tracking processes will be improved immeasurably under ONE Record, and we will also pave the way for extensive additional automation within air cargo.
The unrealised success with other past industry initiatives, such as eFreight and eAWB, have also made some stakeholders sceptical of ONE Record. However, I believe this scepticism is unwarranted.
The ONE Record approach has been very different, and it has been many years in the making. The design of the program has been overseen by the highly functional working groups coordinated by IATA and consisting of multiple subject matter experts from various sectors to ensure that the foundational needs of all sectors are met.
Data exchange is the lifeblood of air cargo. Without the exchange of information, the industry stops. The industry needs the most effective and efficient data exchange process possible. Now is the time to act and to leave a legacy.
If you are a decision maker and influencer in the air cargo industry, who can encourage the implementation of ONE Record within your organisation, I would like to ask you a couple of questions. If not you, then who? And if not now, then when?
Scott McCorquodale has been an executive in the air cargo data exchange sector for over 30 years. Scott’s most recent role was Head of Airline Connectivity with WiseTech Global, the producer of the CargoWise logistics execution platform.
