News / At last, ONE Record – 'like surfing the internet' – is on airlines' radar

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ONE Record, the years-old IATA initiative, is finally gaining traction as the industry realises it needs “fully digitised documentation”.

Lufthansa Cargo has been among the first to champion – and develop – ONE Record, which was essentially just an idea without a structure.

“It has been a permanent uphill battle for years to convince all parties in the supply chain,” explained Jan-Wilhelm Breithaupt, Lufthansa Cargo’s VP global fulfilment management.

“Our vision is that we want to decouple the documentation and information flow from physical handling, similar to the passenger business. So what do we need? We need a fully digitised documentation acceptance with all documents.”

Lufthansa Cargo was among the first to gain 100% e-AWBs; it introduced a financial stick to help incentivise partners – but, as Dr Breithaupt pointed out at the Air Cargo Handling & Logistics conference in Athens last week, “there are a lot of other documents”.

“We have to penetrate or push forward the use of other documents, and we have to think about other documents to be digitised.

“The only solution we see at the moment is ONE Record. We have to completely overcome the old messaging system. This messaging system was developed by our grandparents 50 years ago, and it’s based on textual transmission of data. And on that level we only have messages for three documents, the house air waybill and air waybill, the dangerous goods declaration and the consignment security.

“We’ve had working groups for years to jointly agree on certain messaging standards, but this won’t lead to success in the future.”

Dr Breithaupt explained that ONE Record was “like surfing the internet”. He explained that Lufthansa’s system runs on URL links which direct you to the different stakeholders’ systems, which eventually show the piece level number.

“And now we have a big change, for the first time. Is there any standard of piece level number on the planet? No, for years we have been searching for that, because the piece level number has to be defined by the shipper, and IATA was not able to define a piece level number from a carrier’s perspective.

“But it doesn’t matter, because it’s just a link. And the only rule to be followed is that this link is in accordance with the rules of the internet.”

Phaedra Den Hertog, Awery’s customer success project manager, said the traction of ONE Record was a “milestone”.

“The transparency will work. When ONE Record was launched, many years ago, I was really excited about it – and yet it has still not been established. We are getting there, but it needs the consent and support of everybody.”

In June, Awery won the CargoiQ prize at IATA’s ONE Record Hackathon for its door-to-door airfreight planning and real-time updates for CargoiQ members.

Awery’s prototype open-source solution helps stakeholders plan via a web address, which Cargo iQ members and non-members can share with their unmonitored providers, enabling them to input shipment details through IATA’s ONE Record data-sharing standard API.