Lufthansa Cargo is launching a pilot in three countries, in preparation for going live worldwide on CargoAi. It will be the first CargoAi customer to make use of the instant rate offer and booking confirmation.

Lufthansa Cargo signed a Letter of Intent with CargoAi, marketplace users in The Netherlands, Italy, and Spain have access to routings and capacity information on all Lufthansa Group airlines serving those countries. General and Express cargo can now be booked on Lufthansa, Austrian, Brussels, Eurowings, or SunExpress.

This initial roll-out is a pilot that will run for the next two to three months, during which CargoAi and Lufthansa Cargo fine-tune their preparations for a global go-live, should the technical pilot run smoothly. Lufthansa will then benefit from an easy-to-use, customized e-booking system, allowing the carrier to optimize the efficiency of its forwarding process. It will also benefit from the promotion of its services to the more than 5,000 freight forwarders across 103 countries who regularly use CargoAi’s marketplace. “We are honoured that Lufthansa Cargo, one of Europe’s largest air cargo carriers, has chosen to market its capacities on our platform,” says Matthieu Petot, CEO of CargoAi. “Lufthansa Cargo has often pioneered innovation in its long history and is again ahead of the digital curve with CargoAi: it is the first and only airline so far to enable forwarders to make use of our instant rate offer and booking confirmation functionalities.”

Ashwin Bhat, CCO of Lufthansa Cargo, explains “We want to give our customers a choice of booking channels. The impressive success that CargoAi has demonstrated in just the four years since it was founded, mirrors the innovation that we strive for within our company and industry. Lufthansa Cargo was among the first to introduce eBooking-channels within the airfreight segment, and we have large numbers of customers using the ebooking functionality in three pilot countries. We will be listening with interest regarding the new software’s features and “user friendliness & experience.”