AfA Urges Restraint on Proposed Legislation on ACAS

Lawmakers should wait until the completion of the Air Cargo Advanced Screening (ACAS) pilot before introducing legislation codifying it, said the Airforwarders Assocation (Afa) in a letter to Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Ranking Member Susan Collins (R-Maine). AfA said proposed legislation, the "Secure International Air Cargo Act of 2012," would cement ACAS as law. Requests for comments to the lawmakers on the legislation weren't returned by press time.

(ACAS allows CBP and TSA to receive advance security filing cargo data as a means to target cargo shipments inbound to the U.S. that may be high risk and require additional physical screening under the appropriate regulatory framework and protocols. See ITT's Online Archives 12040309 for summary of the ACAS strategic plan.)

The legislators should wait until the completion of the ACAS pilot before moving forward with a bill, said AfA. While AfA said it supports the goals of ACAS, "we believe it is premature to codify the program in law before the pilot runs its course." The pilot is in the second of three phases that affect air cargo. The first phase focused on reviewing shipment data from express carriers such as FedEx and UPS. The second phase involves scanning information from passenger airlines and forwarders, and the third phase will cover data submitted by all-cargo airlines.

Recently Met with CBP

AfA and the Global Air Cargo Advisory Group (GACAG) recently met with senior CPB officials to discuss the ACAS initiative. AfA agrees with GACAG that there remain several issues that must be resolved in the ACAS pilot, "especially where passenger airlines and their forwarder customers are concerned," said AfA. "Each requires a pragmatic approach given the many different ways of doing business in the air cargo industry and the number of parties involved in the shipment process." The two groups expect these issues to be worked out as more data is returned from the pilot program, said AfA. Now three months into the ACAS pilot, CBP has said the three phases of pilot would take a total 28 months, leaving much still to do, it said.