By 
Lost cargo is inevitable. Here’s how Airspace handles it
Lost cargo happens daily – not because airlines and others who handle parcels, cargo and packages are incompetent, but because it’s a complicated business and people are, well, human; and humans make mistakes. There are so many handoffs and so many moving pieces that mistakes are inevitable. Think of a big spoked wheel that keeps turning.
The real issue is what can a company like Airspace Technologies do about it. The answer? A lot.
First on the list is establishing and maintaining transparency with everybody and everything that touches our packages. If we can’t rely on transparency from carriers, it puts us in a very tough place – so we work hard to make sure we have it and keep it. At a very high level, this occurs on two levels: Through technology – and we’ve built the best in the business – and through good-old-fashioned person-to-person relationships.
On the tech side, we use geofencing, QR codes, web interfaces that handle instant communication and artificial intelligence and machine learning to help predict where and when trouble might occur and then how to deal with it. Our unique technology enables us to track, notify and understand when trouble occurs faster and better than competitors. Where and when was it scanned? Did it depart on time, on the right airplane? All companies can validate in some of these ways, but only Airspace offers such a large menu of multiple validations.
On the person-to-person side, one component is having thorough policies and the trained people to execute them. So when our technology reports a package is missing, the policy tells us where to start looking and how to conduct a thorough search, including the cargo bay and elsewhere. We’re so good at this that we can often locate a missing package faster than the airline itself.
This is not to say airlines aren’t getting better
They’re doing a good job with internal tracking and they are offering, for example, new ‘white-glove’ services critical items like hearts intended for transplants. In these cases, the package may never leave a person’s hands until it is placed in the cargo hold.
Another ‘human’ element
Unlike most of our competitors, we have established direct points of contact – people we can call 24/7 when sh*t hits the fan. We work directly with airlines to research lost items, start a trace, and we can even provide them with pictures of the QR codes on the package, which is also unique to Airspace Technologies. In other words, we pound the pavement and make sure the airline is not far behind.
Blood, sweat, tears, and technology. That’s how we do it.