Washington, USA, Wednesday June 4th 2014 – A coalition of associations representing air freight forwarding companies is calling on the federal government to solicit input from small and medium sized forwarders before expanding the Air Cargo Advanced Screening (ACAS) program.
The program, which analyzes advance data on inbound air shipments to the U.S. to assess risk, is currently in pilot phase, but U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has signaled that they intend to expand it to apply to all inbound air cargo via a rulemaking.
The Airforwarders Association (AfA), the National Customs Brokers and Forwarders Association of America (NCBFAA), The International Air Cargo Association (TIACA) and the Express Delivery and Logistics Association (XLA) have jointly sent letters to CBP and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) noting their support of the concept of the ACAS program’s risk-based analysis at the shipment level, but saying “we are concerned about certain issues which we feel have not yet been fully resolved within the ACAS pilot.” In addition to detailing issues regarding potential negative impacts on small and medium sized air forwarding businesses, the letters included requests to meet with both agencies and representatives from air carriers in June to discuss the concerns and try to resolve them.
