In Taiwan China Airlines (CAL) has become the first airline in Taiwan to successfully test a new paperless import customs clearance system implemented by the Taipei Customs Office. The system has successfully passed its first test using four manifests transported on CAL flight CI-722 from Kuala Lumpur to Taoyuan International Airport.
In a sense this is part of the International Air Transport Association’s (IATA) ‘e-Freight Message Improvement Program’ which aims to implement a fully paper-free manifests for export clearances.
Logistics Week reports that for the initial test, shippers and receivers successfully exchanged information traditionally recorded on paper manifests and reported the data to customs authorities, which processed the information by computer. A fair guess would be that in less than five years every airline in the world will be using such a computerised method in one way or another.