FT:   There is much talk, and there has been for a number of years, about greening our transport offer. On the ground we almost see the opposite. There is some remarkable opposition to legislative measures in this direction. In many areas of the world there is almost a feeling of resignation that nothing can be done. From your point of view, you stated in more than one occasion that digitisation can actually afford significant progress in providing services that are more compliant with sustainability. Considering your approach, would you be able to provide some examples where good business practice goes hand in hand with sustainability performance indicators?
AM:   The benefits pertaining to sustainability are enormous when it comes to digitisation and more specifically digitisation through the airport and port community systems. Just imagine the fact that today, in spite of individual stakeholder’s automation, we still have around 124 copies of paper (across 30 types of documents) getting generated in moving an international air freight system and an estimated 200+ copies of paper getting generated in moving an international ocean cargo shipment. Our study indicates that about 25% of the copies of paper may be required by law, but there is a tremendous potential to eliminate or drastically reduce the remaining 75% copies of paper and that is roughly 80 odd copies per shipment. With an airport or port single window infrastructure, where the data is shared digitally, the non-regulatory copies of paper can be replaced either with digital data or electronic dockets. If you take an airport with 1 Mn tons of cargo, then we are talking roughly about 1.4 Mn shipments annually. The potential to save the copies of paper is roughly 112 Mn copies of paper on an annual basis, which in turn could be equivalent to saving 11,200 trees on an annual basis. As grandiose as it may sound, if through digitisation we are able to achieve even a fraction of the above potential we would be contributing to the environment a great deal.
     Another example is an idling truck typically burns 0.6 gallons/hour, there are thousands of trucks plying to the airports and ports having a wait and dwell time, in some cases, in excess of 4-5 hours. The typical CO2 emissions are 10,000 grams/gallon. Now, if we can cut down a couple of hours from the overall processing time of trucks through digitisation and the community systems, you are talking about billions of grams of CO2 being saved on an annual basis per airport and port.
     These are common-sense, low hanging fruits of digitisation which can be reaped by creating digital cargo communities. Our pilot behind 300 trucks at the Atlanta airport showed we could save 9 Mn grams of CO2. We have developed a simple savings calculator that can tell an airport or port how much the community can save in terms of environmental and economic costs by deploying community level automation.
     Having had consideration for environmental improvements, Kale Logistics’s President told us more about his business objectives: “I would just like to state that building digital cargo communities around airports, ports is going to take the industry to a more efficient, secure and sustainable future. Not just that, but the global industry bodies like the United Nations CEFACT has also given a recommendation (recommendation 33) that talks about the path to trade facilitation through community systems; the International Maritime Organization has already taken a step by recommending the mandate of Maritime Single Window system. Even the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) through the Annexure 9 on Facilitation recommends the implementation cargo community systems to create a trade facilitation infrastructure. The term community systems had been abused in the past with point to point EDI also being referred to as a community system. A true community system is nothing but a commercial airport or port single window system wherein the stakeholders get a digital infrastructure in terms of a single window to exchange data with the other stakeholders of the supply chain. The TIME IS NOW!”
     Listening to our friend Amar More we felt the same sense of expectation we had more than 25 years ago at an IATA meeting held in Vancouver. The air cargo world was opening to our incredulous eyes as a colossal heap of opportunities, all within reach. The only thing to do was agreeing on common standards for data exchange and the world of air logistics could become fully interconnected and, perhaps, automated. The other transport modes would follow suit and we thought the world of international trade was going to be changed for good before the end of the millennium. Soon everything would be available everywhere for everybody, those were our imaginings.
     Well, we have lived a curious experience in the last 25 years or more. Rather that pushing toward innovation and automation to expand the horizon of global trade, enhancing our life standards at the same speed, we have taken a big plunge into the inner human soul, magnified the stimuli of our inner selves and shrank the perspective of our dreams from the exploration of space to the magic of shopping without moving a step form our screens. Needless to say that nothing of what we had imagined as progress actually happened and what truly happened was making everything much easier and more complicated at the same time, too much of anything that has no value for Us at all. We went from “2001, a space odyssey” to the “Inception” and, with much resistance, we had to restrain our hopes.
     From other points of view, it is perhaps good that we did not manage to change the world and make it more interconnected through the standards of the past.      Ralph Waldo Emerson is credited to have coined this expression: “Life is a journey, not a destination.” Well, kudos to all those who, wittingly or unwittingly, managed make this journey almost eternal . . . Maybe Amar is the right captain to take us and air cargo logistics to its destination.
     Thank you, Amar More and Kale Logistics for taking this challenge without hesitation and proceeding in this fascinating journey, we'll keep our fingers crossed.
Marco Sorgetti/Tirthankar Ghosh

air cargo India and ATC Aviation Services AG made big news today at the big Mumbai event.   Competition was hot and heavy and when the dust cleared there on the stage accepting the coveted air cargo india Award as Highly Acclaimed GSSA were from left Dagmar Hanau, ATC Group Marketing Manager, Ingo Zimmer, ATC CEO with the great Jane Vaz, Manager Sales - India. Here up where they belong are the ATC air cargo "Stars of India"!   We asked Ingo to share some thoughts as to the why and how ATC has experienced its meteoric rise and as usual he was at no loss for words.

     Can you imagine something more buoyant than this? You are in the air and this is your message: “Hi Geoffrey, this message reaches you from 10.000 m above Turkey on my way to Mumbai thanks to LH FlyNet®.”
     That was on Sunday night February 11; our friend Ingo Zimmer, the epitome of the accomplished GSSA, took advantage of the relative tranquillity of thought that even the busiest businessmen find when they fly high in the sky, to share his view of last year and the year ahead at ATC, answering our questions.

FT:   What surprised you? Moving over to ATC where you deal with several resources there are challenges can you describe how you handle them?
IZ:    Challenges are what we need to have a satisfying working life. To deal with and to understand the needs of more than just one airline, to work with close to 100 of them is a challenge indeed, believe me. Different products and strategies, different mentalities of our customers, but also our employees working for ATC in 30 different countries is a cultural challenge requiring clear vision and a lot of understanding, but it surely is the best job in the world!

FT:   What are the most important aspects of what you do?
IZ:    In order to keep our customer happy and create value in their value chain we try to be the best in whatever we do. We try to be always fair and honest, whoever we deal with. Each and every customer is always treated as the most important, there is no second-tier customer for ATC.

FT:   How is the business climate? Can you offer a 2023 wrap on the various markets activities of ATC in some detail? What lies ahead for 2024?
IZ:    2023 was a year of flat tonnages for our customers like for most of the stakeholders in our industry. Compared with 2022 the yields shrank by 30%, but for most of the destinations they are still on a better level than in 2019. China rates out of Europe almost dropped down to the low pre-COVID levels. Towards the end of the year however demand recovered, December being the best month of the year; in January 2024 our global tonnages are already 30% above those in the same month of the previous year. February shows a similar trend and the global PMI is also up. These are very positive signs.

FT:    What is the key aspect of a successful GSSA. What do you bring to that effort that makes a difference?
IZ:    The key aspect of a successful GSSA is a combination of several elements in fact: state of the art technologies, including digital services, clear strategies and standardized procedures, but still a strong sales force and network, with a keen eye on the developments happening in our industry and the expectations of our customers. Data is key and with our PowerBI Data Lake we make sure our sales teams and customers get all the relevant information.

FT:   How has COVID changed us? What are you doing day to day that is different? What will never change?
IZ:    Covid has driven the grade of digitalization in our industry a lot. Home-office work is strongly established in our industry now: from Europe to the USA all our teams have the choice to work a couple of days from home. This makes us also very interesting as an employer. Our fellow co-workers enjoy a more rational employment when they are active, saving the time wasted in commuting and cutting costs at the same time. And, last but not least, this is a way of improving our carbon footprint. Whatever comes we try to be prepared: blizzard in the USA, public transport workers’ strikes in France: it doesn’t really matter much, we can handle it. You just need the company laptop, mobile phone and access to the company intranet and you’ve got access to the reservation system and whatever is needed to do your job.

FT:   At Air Cargo India you have a group of people to speak with. What do you consider the main points you want to get across to them about yourself and ATC?
IZ:    At ATC we have a strong global network and . . . yes, we do also have a set-up in India. The Air Cargo India exhibition gives us the unique chance to meet the local forwarders and shippers and our Indian team. Most of the airlines represented by us and potential new airline customers will be around. A perfect chance to have face to face meetings. Maybe it is worth thinking of India almost as a continent rather than a country. We are talking of the place in the world which will become not only the most populated, as is already, but surely one of the most influential in terms of our future economies.

FT:   Are you satisfied that women and other minorities in air cargo 2024 have continued their progress moving on up in management and responsibilities?
IZ:    We are not yet where we should be: our industry is still dominated by males, but we can see it is getting better, more and more top positions are headed by women and there is no reason why this tendency should not progress. In ATC we value gender equality: this is a solid part of our code of conduct.

FT:   What are some things ATC as GSSA is not only proficient in but clearly better equipped to handle in air cargo? What can your experience contribute to better the industry?
IZ:    Our sales proposition is a mixture of many elements, obviously the human factor is always very important, but having a strong global network, the high grade of digitization, the unique data pool, more than 50 years’ experience, clear working procedures and . . . As I said the most important factor is human: our team which is carefully recruited and they benefit from a positive work ambience. People are still our biggest asset and there is no mistake to be made on this point.

FT:   What would be on your wish list that you would like to happen in the air cargo business moving forward in 2024?
IZ:    There is still room for more digitalization in our industry. APIs between Airlines/GSSA and forwarder are key and here we are just at the starting point and progress is slow.

FT:   What are some of your favorite eating establishments and what makes a great restaurant?
IZ:    In order to be my favorite restaurant it must offer good quality food and an excellent service. This is actually not too far from what is important in our industry: excellent products and service.
MLS/GDA