AIS event heralds accelerated growth

Over 150 UK airfreight executives attended “The Future of Airfreight Collection and Delivery at Heathrow”, co-hosted by CCS-UK User Group and BT, with the support of BIFA and Heathrow Airport Limited.

Opened by keynote speaker Steve Parker, Chairman of BIFA, the event was designed to improve awareness of Advance Information System (AIS), the BT CCS-UK truck collection and delivery pre-advice solution.

Delegates heard from James Golding, Head of Cargo at Heathrow, about the airport’s plans to re-develop its existing Cargo Centre area, in order to improve airfreight ground logistics flows, in anticipation of projected strong future growth in traffic. As part of these plans, Heathrow is considering moving to a model in which all visiting trucks will require pre-booked handling slots at the various transit sheds: the core capability of AIS.

Claudia Carley of BT CCS-UK demonstrated in detail how AIS works, assisted by a video showing a typical truck collection and delivery at Heathrow. CCS-UK User Group Programme Director Guy Thompson also outlined the system’s key benefits, and plans for its future development.

The audience also heard from Jo Abbott of handler WFS, Simon Guest of Guest Express Transport and Vicky Petrova of DB Schenker about their respective positive experiences as early adopters and heavy users of AIS.

Guy Thompson also took the opportunity to remind the audience about AIS RoRo, which supports the movement of imports and exports between the UK and Europe via trucks; it integrates with a number of HMRC and EU systems including GVMS, Safety and Security and ICS.

A lively Q&A session saw guests ask many questions about implementing and working with AIS, addressing a panel of industry experts that comprised Steve Parker (BIFA), James Golding (Heathrow Airport Ltd), Claudia Carley (BT CCS-UK), Jason Breakwell (Wallenborn), Lawrence Cockburn (dnata) and Chris Packwood (Geodis). Guy Thompson moderated the session.

After the event, Thompson said: “We were delighted at the strong attendance, and greatly encouraged by the obvious interest shown by our guests. They also provided some valuable pointers about useful additional features they would like to see.

“AIS has truly come of age: it’s now in use by over 90 companies at Heathrow, handling some 3000 weekly movements and generating over 7000 weekly status updates. These companies are already seeing huge benefits; and the more the community adopts AIS, the more it will benefit as a whole through reduced truck queues and improved vehicle utilisation. That means lower costs, but also a potential reduction in traffic and emissions.”

He concludes: “The addition of AIS to the CCS-UK offering has been a major step forward for our community, and paves the way for a more modern, efficient and eco-friendly industry. We now look forward to welcoming many more AIS users after the convincing evidence presented by today’s event.”