IATA, the International Air Transport Association, is the global trade body of the world's airlines. In air cargo it's the institution that sets the standards and runs the commercial infrastructure that forwarders and airlines operate on: the Air Waybill, agent accreditation, settlement, the dangerous-goods rulebook, and the data standards. Nexport Logistics handles your air freight through the Nexportal platform, working within these IATA standards.
What IATA does in air cargo
- The Air Waybill (AWB): the contract of carriage between shipper and airline; IATA owns the standard.
- Cargo Agency Program: forwarders become IATA-accredited cargo agents, the gateway to booking directly with airlines.
- CASS (Cargo Accounts Settlement System): centralised billing/settlement between agents and airlines.
- Dangerous Goods Regulations (DGR): the global rulebook for shipping dangerous goods by air; staff handling DG must hold current DGR training.
The e-AWB
The e-AWB (electronic Air Waybill) replaces the paper AWB with a digital contract: no printing, handling or archiving paper. Under IATA Resolution 672 (the Multilateral e-AWB Agreement), a carrier or forwarder signs once with IATA and can then transact e-AWB with all other signatories. Adoption has climbed to roughly 85% on feasible routes, though the "100% e-AWB" target has slipped repeatedly. Paper still lingers where local rules or trade lanes demand it.
ONE Record: the modern standard
ONE Record is IATA's data-sharing standard built for the API era. Instead of point-to-point document exchange, it creates a single source of truth per shipment — a digital record that all authorised parties read and update, via a standard RESTful API and a shared data model (with a security layer). It's designed to augment and eventually replace the legacy EDI standards (Cargo-IMP, Cargo-XML).
The key date: IATA set ONE Record as the preferred data-sharing standard for air cargo from 1 January 2026. Treat that as the date it becomes the standard of record, not a hard switch-off; by late 2025 IATA reported ~50% readiness and 30+ active pilots, with full real-world adoption trailing into 2026.
What this changes for shippers
Air cargo is a speed game with many handovers (forwarder → handler → airline → handler → customs). The e-AWB and ONE Record cut the manual re-entry between them: fewer delays, fewer errors, and shipment data that's ready for digital community systems like Cargonaut at Schiphol.
How Nexport Logistics handles it
We arrange your air shipments as an accredited part of the air cargo chain, with e-AWB where available and dangerous goods handled to DGR. You track everything in Nexportal.
Shipping air freight? Email info@nexportlogistics.nl.
Official sources: IATA — e-AWB · IATA — ONE Record · IATA — Cargo Agency Program. Related: Air Freight · Air Cargo Platforms · Cargonaut · Dangerous Goods