Current challenges

Through its development ONE Record has sought to bring the transparency to the air cargo shipment process that consumers are already used to when tracking the progress of their purchases. This is a big ask. While e-commerce providers had the opportunity to start afresh as a new business, air cargo stakeholders, be they airlines, forwarders, Customs authorities and warehouses, all had their own often old legacy systems that were mostly unable to communicate with each-other.

This fragmentation of data across the air cargo supply chain, was the source of frustration for shippers and consignees, expressed on the day by Sean Wang, Director, China Logistics Development at Intel China. “Once a shipment leaves our facilities, we have very little visibility of the end-to-end logistics,” he said.

Current solutions

The ONE Record API offers a clear solution, building a bridge between systems to bring this visibility while preserving data quality by ensuring that the data owner grants access to data relevant only to each of the various stakeholders along the shipment journey while logging progress as the shipment passes through the many links of the air-cargo chain.

Cathay Cargo has accomplished its own milestones as part of its overall digitalisation journey, with its day-to-day production use cases and more recently, the ability to provide real-time Customs clearance updates to customers using ONE Record, but there is more to do be done to build this ecosystem.

Jonathan Parkinson, Head of Cargo Digitalisation at IATA, says this work is underway industry wide. Speaking separately from the event he said: “We’re seeing strong awareness and growing alignment around ONE Record. The message from the air cargo industry is clear: stakeholders are moving decisively toward ONE Record as the preferred data-sharing standard.”

Beyond the standard

Cathay Head of Cargo Digital Andress Lam did attend and took part in a panel session, where she outlined one of the semantic issues with ONE Record – the use of the word “standard” to describe it. “I think one of the biggest myths is actually that ONE Record is only a technical standard,” she said. “It’s actually a key enabler for you to develop new services.”

Cathay Cargo Digital Manager Transformation and Systems Planning Wayne Lai, outlined in his presentation that smartphones were designed as comms tools, but by enabling developers to build apps on top of them, they have become far more than just a phone.

The same idea applies to ONE Record, as IATA’s Parkinson outlined. “The narrative is simple: This is not an IT project. It is the prerequisite that enables all other cargo digitalisation initiatives to scale faster, more efficiently and at lower cost by moving from messaging to shared data,” he said.

The advice from Lai was to identify use cases and go for them, particularly in areas beyond those that have already been explored – take on a pilot and then scale the work up.

Parkinson says IATA will support this philosophy. “In the coming months, we will expand opportunities to participate in ONE Record pilots and strengthen guidance for implementation, he says. “The real differentiator today is execution; how far digital capabilities are integrated into operations and connected across partners. The benchmark is not individual progress, but the ability to operate within a shared, interoperable ecosystem.”

AI and the Future

As ever with any event talking about digitalisation, AI was a hot topic for participants looking into its future potential, and something that Parkinson flagged too because AI counts on quality data as well. “AI only works if the data foundation is right,” said Parkinson. “That’s why ONE Record is a critical initiative.”

This is something Cathay Cargo’s Lam agreed with wholeheartedly on stage at the event.“It's like a virtuous circle,” she said. “Good data will help the AI make better decisions or provide better predictions for us, and then we can further improve the process.”

But for now, the emphasis is on implementation. “The next phase of cargo digitalisation will be defined by who can execute ONE Record at scale,” said Parkinson. “Airlines like Cathay Cargo are clearly positioning themselves to achieve that.”

Hackathon outcomes

The seminar was followed by a weekend-long Hackathon, co-hosted by Cathay Cargo and Champ Cargosystems, which looked at new and creative uses for the IATA standard and API to bring more transparency to air cargo.

After 28 hours of intense idea development, building and pitching, a joint team from Cathay Cargo and GLS Hong Kong (a development partner for many of Cathay Cargo’s digitalisation projects) took home the Jettainer ULD Challenge. Judges cited an innovative solution focused on tracking passive cooltainers and improving visibility and monitoring for temperature-sensitive cargo.