Airlines create online market for cargo space

A group of leading airlines and forwarders have signed up to take part in a pilot scheme to buy and sell air cargo capacity over the Internet.

The online wholesale marketplace - called the Global Freight Exchange (GFX) - is being developed in association with IBM, and will go live on 1 May.

The airlines involved include American Airlines, British Airways World Cargo and Swisscargo while some of the forwarders featured include Emery Worldwide, Fritz Companies and Panalpina.

They claim GFX will allow companies to exchange information on capacity and price requirements against availability on given routes via the Web. Updates will occur every 15 seconds.

David Ravech, co-chief executive of GFX, said: "This approach has enabled us to develop functionality which is highly tailored to airfreight, and addresses the many complexities of this sector. We believe the benefits for early users will be so convincing that the rest of the industry will rapidly join the exchange."

A number of other airlines have already shown an interest, but will wait until the pilot scheme has been completed before participating.

For more information on GFX, see http://www.gf-x.com .