The annual Cargo Network Services (CNS) conference was a great success in May!
Approximately 400 delegates turned out for the 19th edition of this key industry event. The overall theme of this year’s event was “Implementing the Vision”, the vision being the Global Cargo Agenda originally defined by IATA in 2007.
Michael Vorwerk, the newly appointed President of CNS quickly set the scene with a market analysis showing the underlying factors responsible for the recent unprecedented drop in air cargo volumes. Against this background he reiterated the five elements that comprise the Vision: Efficiency, e-freight, Quality, Environment, Safety and Security.
Over the next two days a variety of speakers addressed a broad range of topics, but almost all their conclusions came back to the need to implement one or more elements of the vision.
The keynote speaker, Robert Crandall, the former CEO of American Airlines opened by saying that in his 40 years in the aviation industry he could recall very few where we weren’t actually in a crisis. His three-point action list was; Fix Security - 100% screening of air cargo in the USA will happen and we need to take aggressive action now to ensure compliance; Push for e-freight - The adoption rate needs to speed up, and more pressure exerted on groups like the World Customs Organization to standardize documents and data required to move goods across borders; Improve Quality – Outstanding service is the best guarantee of success, but with the cautionary note that cutting costs to below the price of excellent service was always a recipe for disaster.
Participants declared this to be the best conference to date! Whether it was the relevance of the program in these difficult times, or the intensive networking that went on throughout is yet to be determined, but one thing is certain – the work doesn’t stop here. So mark your calendars now and don’t miss PC2010 at the Doral, Miami from 2-4 May.
More details of the conference and CNS current activities on www.cnsc.net.