New tracking technology and training designed to improve handling.
Imagine being immersed in a crowd of thousands. In this situation, it would not be uncommon to experience being bumped and shoved along, in addition to having that uneasy feeling of not knowing for sure where you might end up.
Welcome to the world of the airline industry’s cargo containers and pallets — collectively known as unit load devices or ULDs. In the name of speed, this equipment is harshly handled by ground handlers, truckers and freight forwarders, resulting in an estimated $300 million in annual industry-wide repairs. This does not include the more than $20 million of ULDs that are outright lost to the airlines each year.
“Unfortunately, the urgent always trumps the important, and in the hurly-burly of the air cargo environment where collateral damage is seen as an acceptable outcome of on-time performance, the ULD will always come out worse,” said Bob Rogers, vice president of ULD CARE and a senior adviser to Nordisk, one of the largest ULD manufacturers in the world.
But help for the lowly ULD is now on the way in the form of advanced mobile communication-based tracking technology and enhancements to workforce training on the proper handling of this equipment.
Toronto-based ULD CARE is a not-for-profit industry organization started in the early 1970s by the airlines and ULD manufacturers to provide uniformity in the management and tracking of air cargo containers and pallets when the airlines interline or share flights. In recent years, ULD CARE has expanded its operations to provide the air cargo industry with guidance on how to properly handle ULDs to prevent damage.
The global inventory of ULDs currently includes about 900,000 pieces, which is split nearly evenly between containers and pallets.
The aluminum air cargo pallets range from $800 to $900 each, excluding cargo nets. The basic aluminum-constructed, belly-hold aircraft container, LD3, costs about $1,200, while composite-based LD3s generally cost twice as much. Specialty LD3s containers, such as those used to keep pharmaceuticals at a constant temperature during transport, are even more expensive and generally are rented by the airlines.
However, the biggest risk to using unfit ULDs is the potential damage to the cargo holds of multimillion-dollar passenger and cargo planes, not to mention the threat to the safety of the aircraft during flight, Rogers said.
Due to the costly nature of purchasing, managing and repairing ULDs, more airlines have increasingly turned to third-party providers of this equipment, such as Jettainer, Unilode Aviation Solutions and ACL Airshop. There are about 200,000 ULDs collectively managed by these lessors today.
In addition, many airlines, now including some of the largest in the world, rely on third-party providers to physically handle these ULDs — getting them on and off planes and routing the equipment to facilities either on or off airport property.
Rogers said during this hand-off period to the ground handlers is when the majority of damages occur to ULDs. The lightweight materials, such as aluminum and composites, used in their construction make ULDs susceptible to damage during handling.
The removal of ULDs from the airport also raises the risk of them not returning to service anytime soon — and occasionally contributes to their loss to scrappers. “If the inbound-loaded ULD went to a consignee about 500 miles from the airport on a truck, who on earth is going back to collect it?” Rogers asked.
“The answer to preventing ULD loss is a proper chain of control, with every transfer being documented in paper or electronically as it happens,” Rogers said. “This is absolutely the case with sea containers. So why not for ULDs?”
Nearly 50 years ago, the International Air Transport Association established the paper-based ULD Control Receipt for airline-to-airline transfers of containers and pallets. However, the information for airline-to-third party ULD transfers is almost nonexistent.
“What other asset gets transferred between parties with almost zero control and/or transfer of responsibility? It’s a ridiculous situation,” Rogers said.
Typically, a cargo terminal will have some form of paper document signed when a ULD departs for an off-airport location. If the ULD is loaded, more than likely the document will be a receipt for the cargo and not the ULD.
“As far as getting the unit back, the cargo terminal has usually taken no responsibility, believing it’s up to the airline’s local staff, who have numerous other matters on their hands,” Rogers said. “It’s pretty much dysfunctional.”
Bluetooth Tracking. Airline ULD managers for years have searched for technology to electronically track cargo equipment, but with little success.
In the early 2000s, some airlines tested radio frequency and global positioning systems to track cargo equipment, but the technology proved expensive, difficult to manage and suffered damage in the ground-handling environment.
Other airlines tried affixing barcodes to their equipment. While the approach showed promise for container management, it generally failed for pallets, which are densely stacked on top of each other.
Advancements in mobile phone technology in recent years, specifically Bluetooth, have given rise to the most promising way to efficiently track ULDs to date, Rogers said.
Industry tracking technology firms, such as Core Transport Technologies of Nelson, New Zealand and Irving, Texas-based OnAsset Intelligence, have recently introduced Bluetooth low-energy (BLE) devices and readers for tracking ULDs.
Unlike earlier RFID tags and scanners, BLE tags for ULDs are tiny and thin and use sparse amounts of battery power. The BLE scanners are as small as a typical wireless router and are capable of reading BLE tags at much greater distances — within a radius of 80 to 100 meters. The next generation of BLE tags is expected to allow ULDs to communicate with each other in the form of a network.
Working with Core Transport Technologies, Delta Air Lines in 2016 became the first major airline to test BLE tracking technology for its ULDs and has continued to expand the system’s implementation throughout its fleet.
By late July, the airline had deployed BLE readers at 50 locations, both in the United States and overseas. It also has tagged more than 5,600 ULDs and plans to BLE-enable the rest of its fleet at a rate of 1,600 units per month during the remainder of 2018.
“The implementation of the ULD Bluetooth tracking technology is progressing well and we’re on target to launch in early 2019,” said Shawn Cole, Delta’s vice president for cargo.
Delta said real-time ULD tracking information will allow it to more efficiently oversee and reroute cargo to other flights due to operational glitches, such as those caused by bad weather. The tracking system also will allow Delta to electronically produce the IATA-required ULD control receipts when interlining with other airlines.
Another airline to recently roll out Core Transport Technologies’ BLE-based tracking technology to its ULD fleet is Air New Zealand.
“We considered a range of technologies when choosing a solution and found Bluetooth best met our needs in terms of ease of installation, compliance and level of detail available to the user,” said Rick Nelson, Air New Zealand’s general manager of cargo.
So far, Air New Zealand has installed more than 5,500 Bluetooth tags on its cargo containers and pallets, in addition to more than 100 readers at 29 airports worldwide where it provides cargo services. The carrier did not reveal the cost of the system.
“We’re currently using it to monitor shipment movements, as well as for inventory management and locating missing items,” Nelson explained. “It’s still early days for us as we bed this technology in, but we see enormous potential for it to drive efficiencies. It could be rolled out to airports to monitor ground service equipment or used to manage mail shipments and eventually become customer facing so our cargo customers can more easily monitor their shipments too.”
In late July, Cathay Pacific completed testing with Unilode and OnAsset Intelligence on the practical use of BLE tracking technology for ULDs at its main hub in Hong Kong. The test focused on using the wireless devices within the multistory, concrete structure of its cargo terminal building. The airline said the results were successful and it’s now preparing to test the technology on actual air cargo shipments.
“It’s important to explore technologies that work towards the air freight industry’s aim of offering both customers and operators transparency and data accuracy throughout the entire supply chain,” said Frosti Lau, Cathay Pacific’s general manager of cargo service and delivery, in a statement.
Rogers believes that once the results of these BLE tests prove successful, more airlines and ULD providers will get on board with the technology. “There’s always that wait-and-see period with any new technology,” he said.
In addition, using the BLE tracking information effectively across the airline industry will require a universal, yet protected means of transmitting data to relevant parties in the ULD custody chain. For this task, the airline industry is eyeing the deployment of blockchain.
“Blockchain is ideally suited to the sort of asset-transfer control that the ULD process requires,” Rogers said.
Blockchains are heavily encrypted, transparent databases that rely on data pulled from or pushed to systems. Data is only shared via permissions from the rest of the individual members of that blockchain group.
Rogers said one major airline, which he could not name for confidentiality reasons, currently is running a blockchain pilot that ULD CARE is watching with great interest.
“If blockchain can provide a low-cost, hassle-free platform to record each and every ULD transfer, using data from BLE, a smartphone app or manual input, then we will indeed square the circle and connect the owners and managers of ULDs with their assets wherever they may be,” he said.
Back To Basics. While new tracking systems may enable the airline industry to better pinpoint trouble spots in cargo flows and enhance recovery of missing ULDs, it doesn’t necessarily alleviate the rough handling of this equipment on the ground.
A properly handled and maintained ULD should offer the airline 10 to 15 years of service, but the operational lifespan of this equipment is often cut short by repeated damage and repairs, starting as soon as the equipment enters the field.
Rogers said there’s a “widespread lack of understanding that the ULD is an aircraft part and must be handled and loaded in a specific manner.”
“Inadequate infrastructure, lack of dollies and storage leads to ULDs being thrown to the ground where they are at risk of damage by other equipment,” he said.
The problem is compounded by a global airport ground-handling workforce that’s routinely plagued by turnover and is not sufficiently trained to properly handle ULDs.
However, pressure on the airlines to keep their ULD fleets damage free for the safe operation of their planes has intensified from regulatory authorities.
After the Aug. 7, 1997, crash in Miami of a DC-8 cargo plane operated by Fine Air, U.S. authorities determined that an improperly secured ULD shifted during takeoff, causing the plane to lose control. The crash resulted in the Federal Aviation Administration stepping up its inspections of ULDs and even issuing fines to airlines for using damaged units.
ULD sustainability was thrust into the spotlight once again after the April 29, 2013, crash of a National Air Cargo Boeing 747-400 freighter while taking off from Afghanistan’s Bagram air base. Investigators found the crash was the result of a heavy vehicle that broke free when the plane’s thrust was applied.
The FAA responded to this incident by forming a cargo focus team, “and they are serious,” Rogers said. The agency also is coordinating its enhanced ULD regulations and compliance methodologies with other civil aviation authorities around the world.
“The use of [cargo] straps is really haphazard and affects weight and balance compliance, particularly for freighters where it has become apparent that there are a lot of practices going on that do not comply with and aren’t based on the aircraft weight and balance manual,” Rogers said.
ULD CARE has stepped up its back-to-basics approach to the industry’s proper handling of ULDs. In July, the association started an online process for airlines and ground handlers to sign up for its Code of Conduct, a voluntary set of principles to improve ULD handling.
“The ULD CARE Code of Conduct puts in place a set of simple operating guidelines that will lead to safe and sustainable ULD operations and handling, which must surely be at the forefront of any stakeholder in the air cargo industry,” Rogers said.
The association also offers the book, ULD Explained, and online learning modules through its ULD Instruct program.
“There’s definitely a training vacuum,” Rogers said. “Everyone in this industry gets the dangerous goods training, but almost no one gets ULD training. It’s our goal to change that.”
