Why Airline Cargo Tracking Goes Dark Between Airports
A pharmaceutical shipment left Frankfurt at 6:47 AM. The tracking portal confirmed departure. Twelve hours later, it still shows “Departed Frankfurt”—nothing else. The supply chain manager has refreshed the page forty times. A customer in Chicago is calling. Leadership wants answers. The shipment could be sitting on a tarmac in Amsterdam, cleared through customs in New York, or lost entirely. Nobody knows.
This isn’t a glitch. It’s not bad luck or a one-off system failure. It’s the default state of airline cargo tracking.
The technology to provide continuous visibility exists and has for years. Consumer parcel carriers prove it daily. But air freight operates on infrastructure designed decades ago, fragmented across dozens of independent actors who have little incentive to share data in real time. The gaps aren’t accidental. They’re structural.
Understanding why these blackouts happen is the first step toward working around them.
The Illusion of Real-Time: What Cargo Tracking Actually Shows
When supply chain managers check an air waybill tracking portal, they’re not seeing where their cargo is. They’re seeing where it was when someone last scanned it.
This distinction matters. Consumer parcel carriers like FedEx and UPS have conditioned everyone to expect GPS-like precision: a moving dot on a map, updated every few minutes. Air freight tracking works nothing like this. It’s event-based logging: acceptance, departure, arrival, customs clearance, delivery. Between those milestones, silence.
Most airline cargo systems update only at key checkpoints. A shipment might generate four or five status messages across a 48-hour international journey. Everything between those moments is a black box.
The terminology itself creates confusion. “Real-time tracking” in air cargo typically means that milestone events post to the system within minutes of occurring, not that location data streams continuously. A shipment showing “Departed” at 6:47 AM reflects a scan at the origin airport, not an ongoing signal from the aircraft. The plane could land, the cargo could sit for hours, and the system would show nothing until someone scans it again.
Legacy Messaging Systems: Built for a Different Era
The technical backbone of airline cargo communication is a protocol called Cargo-IMP, part of IATA’s Type B messaging standard. It dates to the 1970s.
Type B messaging was revolutionary for its time: a standardized way for airlines worldwide to exchange shipment information. It remains in use today because it’s universal. Every airline, every ground handler, every customs authority recognizes it. That universality is also its trap. Migrating away from a system embedded in global operations is extraordinarily expensive and complex, so the industry hasn’t.
The limitations are significant. Type B messages are text-based, formatted in fixed fields, processed in batches rather than streamed continuously. They were designed for telex machines, not smartphones. Updating a shipment’s status requires generating a new message, transmitting it through an intermediary network, and waiting for the receiving system to process it. Delays of 30 minutes to several hours are normal.
Imagine tracking a package using fax confirmations while everyone else uses instant messaging. That’s the gap between air cargo infrastructure and modern expectations.
This isn’t a regional problem. Type B messaging is the global standard, which means tracking blackouts affect shipments moving through Singapore as much as those through Chicago. The infrastructure limitation is baked into how the entire industry operates.
The Handoff Problem: Where Cargo Changes Hands, Data Stops
A typical international air shipment passes through at least six separate organizations before reaching its destination:
- Shipper releases cargo to freight forwarder
- Freight forwarder delivers to origin ground handler
- Origin ground handler transfers to airline
- Airline (or interline partner) transports cargo
- Destination ground handler receives and processes
- Final delivery to consignee
Each handoff is a potential data gap. Different organizations run different systems with different update protocols and different priorities.
Ground handling is where visibility most often breaks down. Companies like Swissport, Menzies Aviation, and dnata process millions of tons of cargo annually, but their core business is physical handling: moving freight from truck to warehouse to aircraft and back. They’re paid for throughput and accuracy of physical delivery, not for data timeliness.
Ground handlers typically use their own warehouse management systems, which may or may not integrate smoothly with airline systems. When they do integrate, updates might batch-process every few hours rather than in real time. When they don’t, status information sits until someone manually enters it, if they enter it at all.
The incentive structure reinforces the problem. A handler who scans cargo promptly doesn’t earn more than one who scans it four hours late. The shipment still moves. The physical job gets done. The data trail is an afterthought.
Regional variation makes this unpredictable. Some airports (Singapore, Dubai, certain European hubs) have invested heavily in handler-to-airline integration. Others lag significantly. A shipment routed through a high-tech hub might show more frequent updates than one moving through infrastructure-constrained regions, even on the same airline.
Interline and Codeshare Complexity
Route optimization frequently requires cargo to transfer between airlines mid-journey. A shipment booked on Lufthansa might physically fly on United for a transatlantic leg. Capacity constraints, schedule timing, and commercial agreements make interline arrangements common, and they’re a primary source of tracking blackouts.
When cargo moves from one carrier to another, tracking continuity depends on data flowing between separate, often proprietary systems. Airlines historically treat operational data as competitively sensitive. Even partners within cargo alliances like SkyTeam Cargo or the WOW Alliance don’t always share information smoothly.
The shipper’s visibility is typically limited to what the booking carrier knows. If that carrier is waiting for a status update from an interline partner’s system (a system it doesn’t control) the tracking portal shows nothing. Cargo that physically arrives at its destination might not show as “Arrived” until the operating carrier transmits confirmation back to the booking carrier, which then updates its customer-facing systems. That chain can take hours.
This creates a strange paradox: the more complex the routing, the less visible the shipment becomes, precisely when visibility would be most valuable.
Regulatory and Security Constraints
Not all tracking gaps are unintentional. Some are deliberately imposed.
Customs and security agencies (the TSA and CBP in the United States, similar authorities globally) may restrict real-time location data for certain cargo categories. Shipments flagged for inspection can show stalled or ambiguous status while security processes complete. Defense-related cargo, high-value pharmaceuticals, and other sensitive goods often trigger holds that don’t generate tracking updates until cleared.
From a security standpoint, broadcasting precise location data for certain shipments creates risk. The absence of information is sometimes the point.
For supply chain managers, this adds another variable to diagnose when shipments go dark. Was it a system gap? A ground handler delay? Or an intentional regulatory hold? The tracking portal rarely distinguishes between them.
Emerging Solutions: IoT and Industry Initiatives
The technology gap between air cargo and consumer parcel tracking is closing, driven by two main developments: independent IoT devices and industry data-sharing initiatives.
IoT tracking devices (battery-powered sensors that travel with the shipment) bypass airline infrastructure entirely. Companies like Tive, Sensitech, and Roambee offer cellular and GPS-enabled trackers that report location and condition data regardless of what airline systems show. For high-value or time-critical cargo, these devices provide the continuous visibility that native airline tracking cannot.
The benefits are significant: independence from carrier systems, real-time updates across all handoff points, and additional data like temperature, shock, and humidity monitoring. The limitations are equally real. Devices cost money. Cellular coverage varies. Battery life constrains multi-leg journeys. And some airlines restrict active electronic devices in cargo holds, requiring coordination.
On the industry side, IATA’s ONE Record initiative represents the most ambitious attempt at structural change. The goal is a single, shared data record accessible to all parties across the shipment lifecycle, a standardized API-based approach replacing fragmented proprietary systems.
Progress is happening but uneven. Major airlines are piloting ONE Record integrations. Full adoption will take years, given the coordination required across thousands of stakeholders worldwide. Supply chain managers should view ONE Record as a promising direction rather than a near-term solution.
What Supply Chain Managers Can Do Now
Waiting for the industry to fix itself isn’t a viable strategy. Practical steps can mitigate the impact of tracking gaps today:
Negotiate tracking SLAs into carrier contracts. Specify maximum acceptable intervals between status updates and define escalation procedures when visibility lapses exceed thresholds. What gets measured gets managed.
Work with forwarders who invest in visibility overlays. Some freight forwarders have built proprietary systems that aggregate data from multiple sources, filling gaps that carrier portals leave. This capability varies. Ask specifically about tracking infrastructure during procurement.
Deploy IoT devices for critical shipments. The cost is increasingly justified for pharmaceuticals, perishables, high-value electronics, and anything with significant downstream impact from delays. Treat it as insurance.
Build buffer time into planning. Assume tracking accuracy will lag reality by hours. Exception-based alerts work poorly when “normal” includes long blackout periods. Planning buffers reduce the operational cost of uncertainty.
Educate internal stakeholders. Leadership expecting FedEx-like visibility from air cargo will be perpetually frustrated. Setting realistic expectations about what airline tracking actually provides, and why, reduces friction when blackouts inevitably occur.
Conclusion
Airline cargo tracking goes dark between airports because the systems connecting shippers to their freight were never designed for visibility. Legacy messaging protocols, fragmented handoffs, competitive data silos, and misaligned incentives combine to create an industry where twelve-hour blackouts are normal, not exceptional.
This is changing, slowly. IoT devices and initiatives like ONE Record are introducing capabilities the industry lacked. But structural change across global aviation logistics takes time, and the pace will frustrate anyone measuring progress against consumer delivery expectations.
Supply chain managers who understand why these gaps exist can work around them more effectively: choosing routes with better tracking infrastructure, investing in supplemental technology for critical shipments, and building operational resilience rather than assuming real-time accuracy. The industry will eventually catch up to modern visibility expectations. Proactive managers aren’t waiting for that day.
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