Q&A

What New Air Cargo Security Rules Mean for Business

New air cargo inspection rules go into effect in February. Are businesses ready to comply? Does the measure go far enough?

By Joan Goodchild, Senior Editor

Many have criticized port cargo security in the US as poor. Is it your opinion this mandate will make air cargo security better than the state of port cargo security?
Part of this is changing the mindset. In this line of work, there is a level of theft is perceived to be the cost of doing business. And then there is a group of people that recognize the importance of security but there answer is walk dog past package and call it secure. So I think there does need to be a change of mindset that this is important. The old ways of doing business are just simply not good enough. The major players in air cargo business know this. The smaller players are concerned they are going to get squeezed. There is a cost involved here. But is the aviation system still one of the most likely vectors through which a terrorist might try and attack the United States? The answer is yes.

The measure is not without criticism. Certain kinds of industry, fruit growers as one example, are concerned this heighten screening will be bad for business. What can we tell them?
What business doesn't care about costs? Security is one way of thinking about it. Product assurance is one way of thinking about it. If you are a fruit grower, you want your product to get in the hands of consumers before it spoils. Security is important to you by having a supply chain that functions the way you want it to and is timely. So part of it is changing the mindset here. Call it business continuity. Call it whatever you want. Business has an interest in making sure operations go on uninterrupted. I think that as long as a business knows who is involved in their supply chain, they can vouch for the background of those people. If there is anomaly, with information sharing they can go back and figure out what went wrong?

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