IATA DG Board - Los Angeles, March 2014

The Spring Session of the IATA DG Board is in full swing.  As usual, I attend as a Subject Matter Expert / Observer to the board, representing one of the largest airlines in the world.

I wasnt elected this time around, but it was my first nomination.  There will be three more seats coming open in the near future and I am certain that my company will nominate me again.

The first day was uneventful.  Mostly going over all the changes that the ICAO DG Panel approved.  Only some minor editorial changes were discussed, but over all, the changes are moving forward with emerging technologies.

The big discussion was concerning the new CCAR276 changes regarding the permit process for transporting DG in/out/through China.  There is a lot of confusion and frustration regarding the changes.  We are pretty much at a standstill regarding the issue, since the answers we are looking for, do not yet exist.

For the American flag carriers, the FAA is actively working with the CAAC to properly inform the carriers to be able to easily comply.

Day two is a more active discussion as we are going over member proposals.  The big discussion of the morning is regarding GHS and how to minimize the impact of the GHS program to transportation.  The big concern is frustrating freight because frontline employees see these diamond shaped labels and immediately assume that the article is an undeclared DG.  The Board is looking to provide guidance to the industry on how to handle the program requirements when in conjunction with the transportation of these items.

In my opinion, it complicated the transportation process when the GHS committee chose to use diamond shape labels, with no required size standard.  This easily confuses the acceptance and handling agents, who will think that the article is suspect.  So we need to determine how to best mitigate this problem.

The MSDS issue is also a big discussion item. They are standardizing the format, but the responsibility for accuracy is not owned by any singular governing body.  This continues the question of validity.  For example, you can have a product classified three different ways by three different manufacturers.  How do you know which is accurate or if they are all accurate?

More to come Later