FAPAA SUPPORTS IATA E-FREIGHT INITIATIVE
- Latest News
- Monday, 24 July 2006
Meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia last week for its Executive Council Meeting, the Association officially endorsed the IATA move to reduce paperwork and duplication of processes.
Brian Lovell, secretary general of FAPAA who attended the conference said members were generally agreed in supporting the IATA initiative.
“Implementation globally and throughout the Asia Pacific region would require significant support from individual country governments by way of ratifying necessary international conventions to permit E-commerce,” said Lovell. “This requires agreement by all nations on either Montreal Protocol 4 or the latest Montreal convention (1999) and is a big ask considering the various bureaucracies and legislation required, but we believe it is achievable in the time-frame set by IATA and our member countries will be doing whatever they can to assist and speed up the process.”
Other issues to get an airing included Resolution 505 pertaining to what services airlines included in the airport-to-airport contract of carriage. It was determined that land-based charges varied country by country and should be handled as a local issue at the appropriate level. FAPAA members agreed to support its European counterpart FIATA in its push to have IATA clarify Resolution 505 and ascertain the actual point of delivery (Resolution 600Bii) in the contract of carriage (MAWB).
Rising fuel charges and security costs remain a major concern for FAPAA member countries but FAPAA, like other groupings of representative members cannot, as a body, discuss and make recommendation on rates and charges as this would contravene trade practices in most jurisdictions.
Instead member countries may raise the principle of the matter and FAPAA would make any information generally available to encourage greater understanding of the issues. FAPAA wants to get a better picture of the likely affect of increased fuel costs for carriers in the future and the flow-on effect to its members.
The meeting in Kuala Lumpur also agreed to maintain its individual program membership begun many years ago. FAPAA retained the option but agreed to a motion that individual membership applications must first be approved at the local country level.
The next meeting of the Executive Council is expected to take place in Bangkok in May/June 2007. Final dates and venue have not been determined.
FAPAA is looking at several destinations for its AGM in 2008 with Macau an early favourite.