Air Planning Process
The transportation process for air freight typically involves several stages of which the main stage constitutes the air transport. Since this is the most important element of the transportation chain, the air freight booking is based on this stage. It originates in the airport of departure and ends at the airport of destination. To represent the pre-carriage and on-carriage, that is the transport from the source of the transport to the airport of departure and the transport from the airport of destination to the destination location, you can create two additional freight orders with reference to the air freight booking. These freight orders are called freight order for pick-up for the pre-carriage and freight order for delivery for the on-carriage. These are typically executed as road transportation.
For air freight only one shipping type is supported. This shipping type is called loose and represents non-containerized cargo.
Create an Air Freight Booking
You initiate the manual planning process for air freight by creating an air freight booking either in the Manage Air Freight Bookings app or in the Transportation Cockpit app. For the transportation cockpit a layout to specifically support air freight planning is available and can be chosen when entering the app. The page layout dedicated to air freight planning is called SAP Simplified Air. In the transportation cockpit you can either create new air freight bookings or you can assign freight units to existing air freight bookings.
The Manage Air Freight Bookings app allows you to maintain detailed information for the air freight booking. On the General Data tab of the air freight booking you define the responsible purchasing organization and group as well as the carrier / freight forwarder. The General Data tab also shows the involved locations (pick-up location, airport of departure, airport of destination and delivery location) as well as the corresponding dates (departure date and arrival date). The Items tab lists the assigned freight units and their content and also allows you to add or remove additional freight units.
Once you have entered all subcontracting relevant information, you can send the air freight booking to the carrier or freight forwarder. The carrier will eventually confirm the booking and provide additional data like:
- Departure Date: Date of pick-up at source location
- Airport of Departure
- Expected Departure Date: Departure date of flight
- Cargo Cut-off Date: Latest date, when the cargo has to arrive at the airport of departure to make the flight
- Airport of Destination
- Expected Arrival Date: Arrival date of the flight
- Availability Date: Date, when the goods can be picked-up from the airport of destination
On the Stages tab of the air freight booking you can add additional information for each stage of the transportation chain. These are the carrier that will execute this stage (if different carriers are used for the main air stage and for road transportation on the pre-carriage and on-carriage). You can also define here, whom you expect to invoice you for each stage as well as planned arrival/departure dates for each stage.
The last planning step is the creation of freight orders for pick-up and delivery. You trigger the creation of these freight orders from the Items tab of the air freight booking. If you want to create a freight order for pick-up for any items, you select the items and press the corresponding button for creation of freight order for pick-up. You can create one freight order for pick up / delivery for all items, or multiple freight orders for pick up / delivery for any subset of items. All freight orders for pick-up and delivery that are linked to an air freight booking are linked on the Document Flow tab.
Manage Air Freight Bookings
In addition to the planning tasks, the Manage Air Freight Bookings app allows you to:
Create, view, edit and cancel air freight bookings
Search, filter, sort, and group air freight bookings based on criteria such as, carrier, airport of departure, and airport of destination
Create deliveries for air freight bookings
Perform subcontracting and communicate the air freight booking details to the carrier. You also receive confirmation from the carrier
Enter invoicing carriers and an executing carrier for stages
View transportation charge details and manually calculate charges from the list view and the detailed view
You can set statuses, such as the execution status, for the entire document (on header level), as well as for individual stages and locations (in the Stages section)
Print CMR waybills (Europe), bill of lading (USA and Canada), and master bill of lading (international) for freight orders for pick-up or delivery.
Create note texts and include attachments
Simulation
In the simulation you will learn how to create an air freight booking, how to plan/assign freight units to your air freight booking in the transportation cockpit, how to subcontract the air freight booking to a freight forwarder/carrier and how to create freight orders for pick-up/delivery.
