Booking air cargo is even easier than booking a passenger flight thanks to a joint innovation between Lufthansa Cargo and cargo.one.

For decades, the progression of an air cargo booking has relied upon the manual allocation of an AWB number – a process designed to reflect the paperwork of the past. If a freight forwarder runs out of AWBs, the time needed to request these from an airline will prevent them booking, and can cause a loss of business.

A study by cargo.one of users that incurred AWB issues during the past year revealed that 55% had run out of stock. A further 33% had experienced delays with their own AWB stock management, and 12% had experienced an AWB validity failure. 

cargo.one users can now book Lufthansa Cargo’s global capacities and have an AWB automatically assigned. The benefits include an even quicker booking time and fewer booking errors.

cargo.one founder & co-CEO Oliver T. Neumann says, “Users love cargo.one because it’s super easy to use, accurate and simple. Removing the pesky copy-pasting of AWB numbers makes booking simpler, faster and removes a source of errors. A small improvement with a big impact on our forwarders’ daily work.”

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, cargo.one has seen a surge in digital adoption from freight forwarders worldwide and growing demand for digital-first processes.

Lufthansa Cargo is the first of cargo.one’s airline partners to facilitate Auto Assigned AWBs in bookings. 

Lufthansa Cargo CCO Ashwin Bhat says, “At Lufthansa Cargo we are committed to finding new ways to drive our digital user experience across all of our distribution channels.

Freight forwarders using cargo.one to book shipments with Lufthansa Cargo can book immediately without needing to find a valid AWB number first, although they can choose to still enter one manually. The user can simply click “Book Now” for any of Lufthansa Cargo’s offers, and an AWB is automatically assigned.