Transporting cargo has never been easier thanks to Quick Allotment Booking
Besides passengers, Air France-KLM also takes millions of kilos of cargo on board every day. Sometimes in the hold of a scheduled flight, other times we transport it in a full freighter. Just like a regular flight, you can also book a ticket for cargo. But if you routinely ship 8,000 kilos of tulips to New York every Thursday, you'd probably prefer to get a fixed spot and price. Challenge accepted, said the developers of the Digital team at Cargo Commercial.
Streamlining processes
'Almost everything can be transported by plane: from letters to computers and from tulips to elephants,' says Joost van Imhoff, director digital at Cargo Commercial at Air France-KLM. 'Shipping parties book an air waybill, or in other words, a cargo flight ticket with us. This transport document contains important information about their shipment, such as transport conditions, flight, and price details. After they fill in the questionnaire and we approve the booking, it can go into the air.'
According to Joost, things used to be different. 'Until eight years ago, the vast majority of bookings were made by mail or phone and processed manually by our customer service organisation, this was hugely time-consuming. Fortunately, customers have been booking and managing their flights easily via myCargo for some time now. In this online environment, they search for a flight, fill in the details of their shipment and make an ad hoc booking.'
Our digital tools got a boost from the corona crisis. Since then, people worldwide have been used to working digitally, so Air France-KLM received more and more requests via myCargo. This also accelerated our digital transformation. Just think, in 2017, only 5 per cent of our customers booked their air waybill online, now six years later, it's a whopping 80 per cent. Yet among competitors, this is still only at 15 per cent. So even though the world of cargo transport is generally not that progressive, we are still way ahead of the rest of the industry.Joost, director Digital Commercial
Next level innovation
Still, the developers felt the booking process could be even smarter and faster. Joost: 'As part of the digital transformation, we further developed our applications. This is how Quick Allotment Booking came into being. Through this new function, customers can save a lot of time by instantly booking contracts for an entire season.'
But that's not all. To encourage greener aviation, Cargo now offers the option to add sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) to a booking. Customers can now also view, change and track bookings more easily. 'We continue to innovate our platform,' says Joost. 'Because everything happens online these days, we're also receive a lot of data. We use that in turn to set up machine learning models for our dynamic pricing among other things. We keep innovating our digital and commercial approach to offer customers the best possible experience, as well as doing our bit for the future of aviation'.
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