Your lowly rating structure reflects the way in how you treat cargo. I wish you would stop saying you are in the supply chain management business. Listen, your record of handling passenger baggage has even been declining at nearly the same rate as you look after commercial airfreight. It is not about the IT systems you have in place to record the supposed movement of freight, it is about the people you employ at the coal face. In the hack-slash world of cutting costs, American carriers have brought everything down to the lowest common denominator. Pay peanuts and you get monkeys.

Cargo Heads such as American Airline’s David Brooks think they are gurus in the class of FedEx’s Fred Smith as they travel the world to standing on any platform they can to tell the world how expert they are at logistics. Dave, every time we use your crummy airline something always happens to prove how woeful your service is. If the freight is not shut out at origin, it goes missing at an intermediary point, but if it is lucky enough to get to destination it gets lost in your terminal. The worst thing is, when you are up to your eyeballs in alligators in exasperation, try speaking to anyone who has the ability to provide an answer that will appease a customer! Talk about goobly-gook and double-Dutch! So Dave, can you spend a little time with your feet planted firmly on the ground instead of your head in cloud cuckoo land and address the issues that cause your airline to constantly muck up.

Firstly, employ some key people who know something about something and pay them well. Secondly, take a look at your resources and determine what you can and cannot handle. Thirdly, teach your handling agents how to handle freight and properly record everything. You may need a bar-coding system to help you for starters. Make a manifest up for every ULD, so the split shipment nightmares become something of the past. How about holding your handlers accountable. You see Dave, American Airlines may have more aircraft than any other, but most of them are simply unsuitable for cargo. Instead of taking bookings in kilograms, why don’t you go a step further and demand the cubic measurement and preferably with the carton dimensions as well? Your aircraft do not have elastic sides, my boy.

So mate, like your American carrier competitors, get your head out of your ass, forget about the supply chain nonsense and get back to basics. You and your employer might just earn a little more respect at the end of the day, if you could just start under-committing and over delivering. We are living in solemn times and we would readily forgive you if you just became honest with yourself.

When TSA first announced its implementation policy we became aware of the ramifications or I should say three senior staff members did. President Peter Lamy immediately saw huge opportunity while all I could see was increased costs! In spite of my skepticism, Peter went ahead and brought two experts on board; Jeremy Vergara and Zachary Zemby. The three of them, with me as an observer, tackled the issues and challenges with schoolboy enthusiasm. Today, our screening facility is a credit to Peter’s vision and tenacity to get the job done. CII also owes a huge amount to both Zachary and Jeremy for their thousands of hours of research and subsequent implementation of the plans.

As the rest of the industry continues to be at sixes and sevens praying the TSA will postpone D Day, the CII teams in Los Angeles, Atlanta and New York are ready to pick up the mantle once August 1st arrives. There is no question our screening facility will become a major source of revenue/profit in the years ahead.

CII’s original motivation was at first it could become a great source of income because it would be a perfect fit for our wholesale forwarding operations. Unfortunately after a couple of experiments earlier this year taking on outside forwarder customers’ screening we have realized it is a hugely expensive and time consuming exercise. The result is instead of being a pathfinder, we are going to sit back and see what happens come August 1st. The airlines were the idiots that have set the initial standards and should their rates become the norm when 100% screening becomes the law, then we are out of the business of being a neutral screening facility.

In order to survive, over the years we have had to adapt to market conditions. We make no secret of the fact our entertainment division is growing in leaps and bounds, and Corrigan’s Express, our niche forwarding operation, has enjoyed exponential growth since 2002. Our wholesale operation has matured and even there we see a greater future acting on behalf of overseas forwarders than we do with the local community. The problem is the Chinese attitude of expecting their service providers to do everything for nothing has hit the American forwarding industry. The result is our business model has had to be modified accordingly to adjust to these new market conditions.

Our philosophy on our screening capabilities plain and simple is we are going to sell our services to the forwarding community at a commercially viable rate. If we can’t, then we will find customers who are willing to pay. So six months before “D-Day, I am letting everyone know, don’t think we are going to become a sucker like the airlines have been. If you wish to take advantage of our services, you will be quoted and charged a rate that provides us with a reasonable profit over our costs. Your alternative is to invest what we have to be completely independent or hope for some fool who will allow himself to be screwed. We will not be such a mug.