The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) set a deadline of July 26 for compliance with new ACI rules, broadly similar to those imposed by the US. In anticipation of this, Traxon has implemented a service which transmits airlines' air import manifest data electronically, prior to an aircraft's arrival on Canadian soil.

Air France Cargo has been able to comply with the Canadian rules since June 19th 2006. Traxon has been processing all the carrier's transactions electronically with CBSA, including House Air Waybill information from forwarders. Canadian Customs is Air France's first use of Traxon's Global Customs Service. In the meantime, the implementation of data transmission to Indian Customs has also been added. Thanks to the effectiveness of the system provided by Traxon, the leading cargo carrier has opted to add US Customs to the service very soon. Further countries adopting similar Customs compliance rules will be added step by step.

Pascal Morvan, Senior VP Cargo Operations and Logistics at Air France, explains the thinking behind this decision. 'We quickly realised that what started with the US CBP in 2004 with Air AMS for advance electronic submission of shipment data, would soon spread around the world but with very differing policies and technologies. That is why we decided to develop a global solution together with Traxon Europe. We now use one standard message set with Traxon who then make sure that the data is delivered to the required Customs in the correct format and on time.'

Edward Dorr, Traxon's Business Development Manager, explains the philosophy behind the system. 'With this solution, Air France has a seamless interface to the different local Customs' systems. One key task for Traxon was to help get rid of the technology headache caused by widely differing formats and data sets around the world. The first findings of the IATA e-freight project have only served to strengthen this opinion.'

Air France Cargo is also using Traxon services to communicate electronically with French Customs. The new DeltaP service for post-arrival flight manifests for all import shipments to CDG airport has just been implemented. This follows NCTS (New Computerized Transit System) which was implemented in 2004. The DeltaP service provides a solution which may later be extended to a broader EU application.