Air cargo's next digital challenge is connecting fragmented data across the supply chain rather than digitising more processes, Shanmugam Thangavelu, product growth lead at Accenture Cargo, told delegates at Aviation Connect in Athens.

"Changing trade patterns, growing capacity, and the emergence of AI are increasing the need for cargo stakeholders to share and reconcile information," Thangavelu said. He framed the industry's data problem as a reconciliation task rather than a digitisation task.

The reframe matters because carriers, forwarders, ground handlers and customs authorities have spent the past decade moving paper-based processes online. Accenture's view is that the remaining gap sits between those digitised systems, which still do not share a common view of capacity, bookings and shipment milestones.

What did Thangavelu actually argue?

His central claim treats data fragmentation as a commercial constraint rather than an IT inconvenience. Capacity planning, ULD tracking, house air waybill capture and security screening each live in separate systems. Planners reconcile them by hand, and the time lost shows up in missed connections and slow exception management.

The commercial consequence is direct: when a lane swings as quickly as cross-border ecommerce, fragmented data cannot keep up. Reports built on periodic snapshots lag a market that now moves on daily capacity decisions.

Why did he single out China-US ecommerce?

Thangavelu pointed to China-US ecommerce trade as a live example of demand moving at speed. That lane has fallen significantly over the past year, he said, in a market where dedicated freighters and belly capacity compete for the same parcel volumes.

For capacity planners, a contracting ecommerce lane produces two effects at once. Dedicated freighter loads drop, and the same volumes that once filled freighters now chase cheaper belly space on passenger flights. Airlines and forwarders need live booking data to rebalance the swing, and fragmented systems cannot deliver it quickly enough.

The read-through for integrators with transpacific exposure: yield management and capacity pricing will depend increasingly on data quality, not just on volume forecasts.

What are the stakes for the three main player groups?

The split, as Thangavelu presented it, runs through three points:

• Shippers lose end-to-end visibility because milestone data lives in separate systems owned by separate parties.
• Carriers cannot price capacity dynamically when forwarder demand curves stay invisible in real time.
• Forwarders absorb operator hours on manual reconciliation that should run automatically, on margins already under pressure.

The argument's commercial logic: AI tools will not deliver the productivity gains the industry expects until the underlying data is reconciled. Accenture's position is that the technology is ready, the data layer is not.

Where does this leave air cargo data standards?

The direction of travel at Aviation Connect pointed toward shared data layers where carriers, handlers and forwarders contribute once and consume many times. That is the same trajectory IATA's digitalisation programmes have promoted for years, now with AI as the immediate commercial driver.

If capacity continues to expand and trade patterns keep shifting at the pace of the past year, demand for reconciled data will outpace the current patchwork. Operators that treat the data plumbing as a commercial investment rather than a back-office line will set the standard for the next planning cycle.