Managing Air Freight Documentation, Worldwide

US Airways Maximizes Profit Margins with Streamlined Transaction Management

US Airways, like most air carriers worldwide, derives a high percentage of revenue from its worldwide freight services. Unlike passenger service, where rates are highly regulated and volatile due to stiff competition and pricing margin pressures, freight service is less restricted and therefore more profitable. Many commercial carriers have even expanded their conventional services to include small package and letter service. Add this to door-to-door delivery, transportation fleets and other related services usually supplied only by local ground providers, and US Airways emerges as a major force to be reckoned with in global airfreight.

The challenge faced by US Airways Freight Service was to rein in its paper trail. With thousands of flights monthly, each with thousands of associated freight transactions, tracking paper receipts and reports had become a costly and time-consuming process, one that required intra-company coordination and a large support organization worldwide. Considering the many US Airways freight collection points around the globe, the airline’s intent to centralize the documentation process had become critical.

Global Archives stepped in to perform a site audit and recommend how to optimize air freight data flow operations. They implemented a step-by-step automated process, built upon a permanent, readily available, electronic repository using LockBox. The end result reduced average processing from 12 days to 2 days.  

Converting Time-Consuming Bottlenecks into Efficiency Centers

The first step in automating US Airways’ air freight documentation process was to identify the collection centers and assign each with unique profiles. Now, each time that records are collected and assembled at a single conversion location, they are identified and linked to a unique database created solely for each record. Examples of most common records in a typical air freight transaction are cargo cash sales summaries, cargo sales reports, airway bills, PDQs and delivery receipts.

In addition to building a database to house unique profiles of every US Airways Air Freight collection point, Global Archives built data conversion systems (actual scan stations with related software) at the airline’s centrally located processing center. Because of the volume and critical nature of the mission, Global Archives provided two redundant systems consisting of document prep stations, scanners, workstations and QC stations. Each processing station includes software to optimize images using VRS technology, perform forms recognition, and automatically capture data. A validation database link to the US Airways master freight billing system validates freight ticket values. And all documents, upon conversion to electronic images, are uploaded to LockBox repository.

Global Archives designed, developed and implemented this system-wide data management solution for US Airways while ensuring minimal interruption of the airline’s day-to-day operations. And the airline’s document process and validation is now performed in fewer than three days instead of 10 to 12.

The second phase of the solution included building eForms for direct access by the US Airways originator of the freight sale. The eForms were available online and supported by LockBox SaaS professional services group. Users were able to access forms 24x7 and once completed, approved and validated, were automatically uploaded into LockBox. This process allowed for many of the forms that could be electronically used. A workflow engine was used to mark documents for approval and notification. This process eliminated many paper forms and thereby further reduced processing at the central processing facility.

The third phase of the solution involved adding office scanners to the collection points for staff to scan directly into LockBox. Using similar software at the central processing center, this implementation of satellite scanning provided a further reduction in paper documents, resulting in reduced overhead and expedited access. In as much as all documents associated with freight are not originated with US Airways, an additional module of scanning and capture was required for miscellaneous documents such as Federal and Foreign customs paper work, affiliated special cargo notification documents, etc.

“Global Archives brought order and process to a very difficult and burdensome business. They brought a fresh set of eyes to the problem and implemented the solution quickly with nominal disruption,” says Chris Abbey, Managing Director.