After 21 years at AfA, Brandon Fried hands over a fight list

Brandon Fried stepped down as executive director of the Airforwarders Association (AfA) on 3 November, ending a run of more than two decades that made him one of the architects of US air cargo security — and leaving his successor a familiar-sounding pile of problems.

Fried joined the AfA in 2000, chaired it for two consecutive terms from 2001, and took the executive director post in 2005. His tenure was forged in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, when aviation security suddenly dominated the legislative agenda and some in Congress wanted cargo off passenger aircraft entirely.

"Some people in Congress wanted to pull cargo from passenger planes," he recalls. "We had to make sure the security regime would not cripple commerce while trying to make the skies safer."

What did 9/11 change for forwarders?

Plenty, in Fried's telling. Before the attacks, security took a back seat; after them, the creation of the TSA put freight forwarders on the front lines. "We realised that failure of our imagination is not permissible," he says.

He spent much of his early tenure on Capitol Hill, walking lawmakers and their staff through how air cargo actually works — and what proposed security measures would do to it. His verdict on Washington is dry but instructive: "A lot of what gets done in Washington is what doesn't get done. A lot of ideas are brought up; many of them are buried in committee and never see the light of day. An important part is to stop bad ideas and shift the thinking in another direction."

Fried did more than deflect bad ideas. He became the industry's go-to voice in the dialogue with the TSA and sat at the table when the legislation underpinning the security regime was drafted.

A clause in a highway bill changed the AfA's posture

Security wasn't the only driver of the association's regulatory focus. One day, a friend at a trucking association called Fried's attention to a new highway bill published the previous evening. Buried in the lengthy document was a last-minute clause introducing a bond requirement that also affected forwarders.

The episode convinced AfA leadership it needed a lobbyist tracking every piece of logistics legislation in Congress. Fried likens the work to NASA monitoring space junk to avoid satellite collisions. "You can't do it all yourself. You've got to surround yourself with competent people," he says.

Another Capitol Hill lesson: there is strength in numbers. Approaching legislators carries more weight when several industry groups join hands, which produced sustained collaboration with the National Retail Federation and others. "We have divergent interests, but there are also things we have in common," Fried notes.

That coalition-building became a plank of the AfA's evolution. The annual AirCargo conference, run with the Air & Expedited Motor Carriers Association, is now a fixture on the industry calendar. Inside the association, airlines, airports, trucking providers and handling agents all got seats at the table. "We felt we should have them at the table and hear their perspective," Fried says. "This is still a people business. That's one thing that hasn't changed in the past 21 years."

What does the new chief inherit?

Steve Smith, former president and chief executive of Airlink, takes over — and Fried is candid about the workload. "The challenges have changed, but they're still numerous," he says. His list:

• Global uncertainty looming over the industry and its clientele, including the situation in the Middle East and its ramifications for air cargo flows
• The rising cost of fuel and insurance
• A heightened threat from cargo crime
• Airport infrastructure bottlenecks
• IATA's white paper on the Direct Air Waybill framework

On theft, Fried is blunt. "Cargo theft has always been an issue; now it's in hyperdrive," he says. "The bad guys got smart. They leverage automation, and they've learned how to circumvent GPS tracking devices."

On infrastructure, he points to "bottlenecks at the major airports because of a complete lack of cargo infrastructure investment" — a constraint forwarders feel every peak season.

The most direct fight, though, may be IATA's Direct Air Waybill framework. "IATA is telling us: 'You're on the air waybill; you've got to take full responsibility,'" Fried says. "Freight forwarders should not be expected to assume liability for cargo they neither own, pack, nor control. We're intermediaries."

That liability battle, alongside theft and underbuilt airports, will define Smith's first years — and, by extension, the commercial terms forwarders face on every US air shipment.