Japanese all-cargo airline Nippon Cargo Airlines (NCA) plans to strengthen its position in the European market with an enhanced digital distribution strategy powered by the cargo.one booking platform, which gives forwarders access to real-time prices and available capacities of multiple airlines.
NCA is the first Asian airline to join the cargo.one booking platform. Integration work to connect NCA’s core cargo system, iCargo, to cargo.one will start.soon, with the full roll out anticipated by March.
Joining cargo.one benefits multiple stakeholders: Forwarders can quickly book NCA’s main deck capacities on the platform with instant confirmation. Adding the capacity of a major Asian freighter operator adds to cargo.one’s attractiveness as a one-stop shop, which is expected to increase the number of forwarders doing business on the site. And NCA can tap into cargo.one’s user base of more than 300 freight forwarding companies, as well as reduce manual transactions via telephone and email.
The cargo.one platform, which is tied to the core systems of partner airlines, focuses on dynamic spot rates, allowing freight forwarders to search, compare freight rates and book cargo in real time and receive immediate booking confirmation.
Forwarders can also modify or cancel bookings.
Other cargo reservation systems include Descartes Global Freight Exchange and Cargo Portal Services, but cargo.one claims it is the first one to cover spot rates in real time.
Last month, El Al Israel Cargo joined began participating in cargo.one for routings from Germany via Tel Aviv to international destinations.
European airlines have tended to be early adopters of digital reservation systems for air cargo, but U.S. and Asian carriers are starting to realize the benefits of digital distribution systems, cargo.one Managing Director Moritz Claussen told FreightWaves. “We believe that booking platforms will become the industry norm over the coming years, as they have in other industries, and we will be able to capture a significant portion of the market.”