The new IATA Multilateral e-AWB Agreement (resolution 672) provides a single standard agreement that airlines and freight forwarders can sign once with IATA to enter into e-AWB agreements with all parties, without having to sign numerous bilateral agreements. 

The Multilateral e-AWB Agreement provides the Legal framework for parties to conclude cargo contracts by electronic means

It includes provisions for:

• The consent to do e-AWB
• The high level operational aspects for e-AWB
• The confidentiality and security of data
• The rights and obligations of parties

• the conditions of contract
• the conditions of carriage

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), enables the computer system from one company to communicate to the computer system of another company and digitally exchange data.
Among all the data/messages that are inter exchanged between the freight forwarder and the air carrier, there are some pertinent to e-AWB. The most important ones are the FWB and FHL messages:
The FWB – Air Waybill data update - contains the physical information of the shipment and all other details that come in the front of the paper AWB.
The FHL – consolidations list - provides the information of the house AWBs.

For e-AWB implementation, Freight Forwarder must have the capability to send electronic data (FWB & FHL) to LAN CARGO and receive electronic data (FNA & FMA & RCS) from LAN CARGO.

Freight Forwarders may have their own in-house systems or external IT providers that allows them to submit FWB and FHL data messages. They can continue using them and establish the correct communication with LAN’s system.

For those Freight Forwarders that do not have their own in-house system that allows them to electronically inter exchange data, LAN CARGO has developed a solution: an online portal that allows the freight forwarder to do e-AWB. This e-AWB portal can be found in My Cargo Manager and access can be requested through your e-AWB contact.

Whether the information is given to the carrier in a paper document or an electronic message, data accuracy is indispensable and important as to avoid delays in customs and spending time with clarifications. Good data quality allows for the transportations processes to run efficiently and for the shipment to be delivered on schedule. The FWB message must be received by LAN CARGO’s systems before the freight forwarder shows up in the LAN counters for the document delivery.

Once contact has been established between the e-AWB team at LAN and the freight forwarders there are two things that have to be ready in order to proceed with the implementation process.

After the electronic data inter exchange is working between the two parties LAN CARGO proceeds to evaluate the messaging and provides periodical reports to the freight forwarder.

Once the level of message penetration is above 90% and the quality of the messaging is above 85% in these reports, then the next step is to begin the trials.

Step 1:
Freight Forwarder sends the FWB message and LAN CARGO bases the cargo transportation in the information provided in this message.

Step 2:
As a backup plan while testing; the freight forwarder will provide the original master AWB in a closed envelope so it does not compromise the operation in case the message does not arrive, comes with errors or with the wrong information.

Since e-AWB is a process that depends 100% in systems there is a need of a back up plan in case some of them don’t work properly. For this LAN has created a contingency plan in order to not compromise the freight forwarders shipments and ensure that the cargo schedule will be met.