Willy Lin, chairman, Hong Kong Shippers Council reckoned the impact of the new legislation would be quite manageable, pointing out that his company already screened 35-40 per cent of outbound cargo, making the act’s target of 50 per cent screeningin the next 18 months quite achievable.
Lin said that getting to this stage had taken several million dollars worth of investment however, a cost which could not be passed on to customers.“We hope to recover this from the USgovernment, as they subsidise passengerscreening,” he said. “They are notbuying it yet, but we are hopeful.”
He also warned that there was currently a lack of scanning machines large enough to scan full pallets of air cargo: “We asked the US if they would accept the machines that we use for sea cargo, but they said no. There is so much cargo in Hong Kong that if it has to be scanned box by box through small x-ray machines, then delays will be not hours, but days and weeks: then what will be the point of usingair freight?”
Stan Wraight, newly appointed chairman of Italian cargo airline, Cargoitalia, took up this theme, saying that it was an opportunity for a smart handling company. Relating his experience of being stuck in long immigration queues when entering the US, he warned that the new law would mean the same would happenfor air cargo.
“If so, then air cargo will lose all its business to sea freight,” he said. “But then that is an opportunity for a company to set up an efficient screening operation and turn air cargo back into air cargo again, not just sea freight that flies.”
This would also be an opportunity for regional airports trying to win business off the larger hubs. “If you set up a proper handling system with expedited security processes, backed by the government, then you couldreally win business.”
Neel Shah, vice president sales and marketing, United Airlines Cargo, pointed out that the new US legislation also covered sea freight security.“Once they start looking at that, aircargo will start looking pretty goodagain,” he pointed out. “The technologyis nowhere close to existing thatcan scan a whole ship.”
Lastly, Felix Keck, managing director of Traxon, put the issue into a wider context, seeing the legislation as part of a process that had started with the requirement to fi le pre-arrival information on air cargo shipments with the US and later Canadian and Indian Customs. Similar legislation would defi nitely be put in place in Europe as well, he said, though discussions on this among member states was still at an early stage.