Air Logistics Cargo Community System – UK (CCS-UK)

Customs clearance at your fingertips

BT can help you gain faster UK Customs clearance by supplying full and immediate visibility of status for all air freight imports and exports.

BT's freight inventory database helps air cargo community users in the United Kingdom exchange essential information with UK Customs. The fast and efficient exchange of consignment declaration data can help you achieve rapid Customs clearance and compliance.

Please see Resources below for BT Air Logistics CCS-UK service terms and conditions.

Meet service commitments on time and under budget

BT Air Logistics CCS-UK Service offers a number of compelling benefits to your air freight organisation, enabling you to:

• Reduce time spent in the ground handling environment.
• Achieve faster clearance times through the elimination of manual processes.
• Help users meet their service commitments.
• Assure the security of commercially sensitive information.
• Reduce the administrative costs of duplicate data entry for both the forwarder and airline.
• Save time and costs associated with fault management.

Fast customs clearance direct from your desktop

CCS-UK delivers a fully managed service, providing compelling features that can ensure immediate benefits for you and your trading partners.

As the only UK Community Service Provider (CSP) specialising in air freight, CCS-UK reduce clearance times and costs by:

Providing visibility of the central inventory to all community parties.

Distributing relevant information to the appropriate parties in a timely manner.

Delivering automatic notification of cleared goods:

• Shortening clearance times by bypassing manual processes.
• Helping reduce time spent in the ground handling environment.

Enabling co-operative working and collaboration amongst the freight agent, airline and customs systems:

• Helping you meet your service commitments.
• Ensuring earlier end-user delivery times.

Offering open interfaces to airline, cargo handling and forwarder software packages.

Operating 24/7 with full technical and operational support:

• Helping enable secure, always-on access to commercially sensitive information.
• Hosted in BT Data Centres, with full data backups in a resilient, fault tolerant environment.

Speeding up the export and import process:

• Supporting positive clearance.
• Enabling prompt re-routing of goods for inland clearance procedures.
• Providing rapid notification of customs examinations.

Reducing your paperwork.

Benefit from rapid, automated clearance through UK Customs

CCS-UK provides a secure, hosted service to enable a free flow of data between freight agents, airlines and UK Customs to speed clearance times at UK airports. The resulting automated clearance process can reduce paperwork, speed up both export and import processes and enable your organisation to meet the service commitments pledged to your customers.

CCS-UK is one of only six Community System Providers authorised to connect to, and exchange messages with, the HM Revenue and Customs electronic declaration processing system, Customs Handling of Import and Export Freight (CHIEF). CHIEF documents all UK imports and exports, issues invoices for duties and taxes where appropriate, and can grant immediate clearance where customs declarations correspond to inventories held by CSPs. CHIEF may also select shipments for inspection and validation. CHIEF, CCS-UK and your organisation communicate in realtime – updating information promptly and helping your shipments proceed through UK Customs import and export procedures.

CCS-UK is part of the BT Air Logistics portfolio of products, services and solutions. They provide enhanced visibility, control and consistency for your business whether airline, ground handler or freight forwarder. Our services can enable the rapid, automated clearance of shipments and help ensure faster, more reliable transit times. Cargo Community Services are hosted in secure BT Data Centres in the UK.

We speak your language

CCS-UK, as the only UK CSP specialising in air freight, provides full support for the
International Air Transport Association (IATA) approved message standards used within the air freight industry:

• Cargo Interchange Message Procedures (CargoIMP)
• Electronic Data Interchange for Administration, Commerce and Transport (EDIFACT)
• Cargo IMP version of EDIFACT (CargoFACT)

Written to the IATA C-Star functional design, CCS-UK provides message switching hub facilities (where both the message sender and recipient support the same message standard and type) as well as message standards hub functionality (where the service translates messages between different message standards or converts messages between different versions of the same message type). Supporting ‘store and forward’ EDI messaging, the message hub saves the outbound message if the recipient is not logged-on, removing risk of message loss.

As well as supporting the EDI interface specified by UK Customs for the CHIEF service, CCS-UK also support the Human Computer Interface (HCI) which allows operators to key information into the CHIEF ‘terminal’ technology.

Additionally, through use of ‘closed user group’ network services, CCS-UK ensures the integrity and security of data flowing between Customs, customers and the central message switch.

An essential service for air freight organisations

BT Air Logistics CCS-UK service is ideally suited to larger UK air logistics operators who need to improve visibility of their consignments in transit and speed up delivery to customers.

If your air freight organisation is keen to enhance quality of service while reducing risk, improving sustainability and improving resilience, CCS-UK has real benefits to offer you.

United Kingdom only.

Serving your present and future needs

BT has been at the forefront of successfully deploying innovative, business-focused systems to meet the needs of the air logistics industry for over 35 years. We have offered solutions covering a range of business areas, including easing the exchange of information, conducting essential customs processes and improving visibility across the entire supply chain.

In addition to the UK Customs Service, which currently processes more than 95 percent of United Kingdom air imports, BT has delivered customs solutions in other parts of the world, as well as providing connectivity to the EU member states through our Smart Customs service.

With these credentials, the BT Air Logistics CCS-UK service provides an established market-leading product.