IATA (International Air Transport Association) has developed a new standard for messaging between airlines and other air cargo stakeholders, such as shippers, freight forwarders, ground handlers and regulators, as well as customs and security agencies. This new standard (Cargo-XML) is based on multimodal and cross-border messaging and aims to:

• Facilitate freight-related business processes.
• Meet customs requirements for filing advanced cargo information.
• Comply with security regulations such as e-CSD.

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The industry's request for electronic data interchange(EDI) for cargo was to freeze Cargo-IMP messages by the end of 2014 and encourage the use of Cargo-XML messages. Cargo-IMP messages can still be used in the industry, but IATA has stopped improving this standard.
This implies that:

• The latest edition of the Cargo-IMP manual (34th edition) was published in late 2014.
• New updates will only be made to the equivalent Cargo-XML messages.
• IATA will only maintain the Cargo-XML manual and toolkit.

Cargo-XML represents a huge challenge for the industry.

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