China Southern Airlines Awarded with Top Three Airlines 2017 for e-AWB Achievement in Shanghai Area
China Aviation Daily | Sep. 07, 2018
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On August 24th, IATA awarded China Southern Airlines Top Three Airlines 2017 for its outstanding e-AWB achievement in Shanghai area, to recognize its rapid development in the utilization of international e-AWB. It is the second time that China Southern Airlines received the honor for e-AWB implementation, with the first one in last year as Potential Star 2017.
Since the debut of domestic e-AWB implemented on October 10th 2009, China Southern Cargo has rolled out e-AWB at totally 15 departure stations and 96 arrival stations, averaging to 160,000 shipments monthly ranking he world's top three in domestic e-AWB volume. International e-AWBs are mainly used on direct international routes ex Guangzhou and Shanghai, also on some overseas return routes, with an amount of average 16,000 shipments monthly. The penetration rate of international e-AWB has increased steadily in the past 3 years. This July, it reached a historic height of 66% (80% ex Guangzhou and Shanghai), increasing 6 percent compared with the same period last year.
Shanghai: penetration from 0 to 80%, accelerating in half year
Starting from 2016, China Southern Cargo headquarter in Guangzhou has worked with its Shanghai office, overcome many difficulties in rolling out e-AWB in third party handled cargo terminal, interface of systems, and change of operational processes. China Southern Cargo has set up data exchanging program and operation procedures for international e-AWB implementation ex Shanghai. A new mechanism of using CCSP platform to capture AWB data is helpful to solve the EDI interchange between some of the agents' IT systems and China Southern Cargo system. Besides, training customers, repeated tests and specialized airline customer service are important to make the success, so as to maximize the customer's benefits and improve efficiency. With dedicate efforts, it took only six months for shanghai office to successfully implement e-AWB on 7 international routes ex PVG. This increased e-AWB penetration from 0 to 80%, and it maintained over 90% ever since.
Guangzhou: further expansion
From Guangzhou for Jan. - Apr. Period this year, e-AWBs were used on 16 international routes with an average over 3000 MAWBs per month, penetration rate up to 54%. After coordination with relevant parties, a further expansion of e-AWB was achieved since May 21. Current penetration ex CAN has exceeded 5000 per month at 81%, which has been raised by 18 percent.
Next step: from e-AWB to e-freight
In the future, China Southern Cargo will continue to work on all of its international routes and achieve the goal of paperless air transportation, boosting further developments towards e-freight. As part of this effort, Shanghai office will continue the expansion of e-AWB and cooperate with IATA to promote e-pouch targeted to run pilot this year November. Guangzhou will continue to seek higher penetration by making good use of the latest developments of integration of customs and quarantine agencies. Efforts will be made to increase the adoption of e-AWB on flights from Europe, America and Australia to Guangzhou.
Contributed by China Southern Airlines