The transportation of such cargo from Asia to Europe would usually take about three weeks.

 

“Using our sea-air link, the entire shipment took only about four days,” said MAS corporate communications (cargo) manager Rosli Yasin.

 

He said that the entire land procedure, which was the time taken for the cargo to be loaded off the ship, trucked to KLIA and placed on board the aircraft, took about five hours.

 

Rosli said that MASkargo expected the sea-air movement to take off on a full scale from next month.

 

He also added that PTP now has a three-letter code with the abbreviated name of 'ZJT'.

 

The three-letter code, which displays the abbreviated port of destination on e-way bills, is recognised by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) as a point of origin.

 

Meanwhile in another development, MASkargo is using its e-commerce services to initiate its customers and users to conduct business using information technology (IT).

 

“In order for Malaysia to be on par with the rest of the world in the IT sector, we must encourage our customers to start moving in that direction.

 

“Looking at the sales and marketing perspective, almost everything these days are all technology-based, and in order for MASkargo to keep up, we have to continually upgrade ourselves.

 

“For us to be cutting edge, we need our customers to conduct business with us via technology, so we would know which areas we need to improve our services on and which areas we need to reconstruct to make it more user-friendly,” said MAS IT relationship manager (cargo) David Chan You Chee.

 

Chan said that with the e-commerce service, MASkargo would be focusing on six key strategies that will quicken the daily transactions between the national carrier and its customers.

 

The six key strategies include:
·The focus on automation;
·The enhancement of all the current systems;
·Making full use of the Internet;
·Turning the work place into a paperless environment;
·The standardisation of all procedures and policies;
·Getting key players to share information on a common message board.

 

“Basically, the idea of the e-commerce service is to get our customers using the electronic tools, which will save everyone a lot of time as transactions will take place in real time and in a matter of minutes,” said Chan.

 

He said the sending and requesting of airway bill stocks electronically has also increased the security between MAS and its customers.

 

“There are less chances for anyone to tamper with airway bill numbers as each new transaction requires a password, which only authorised officials are allowed to know.

 

“When we did it manually, there were greater chances for airway bills to be copied and tampered with,” said Chan.

 

He added a briefing for customers with regards to MASkargo e-commerce initiatives was scheduled to be held tomorrow in Petaling Jaya.