The Issues

It has been more than a century since the first airmail flight. Since then Airmail continued to play an important part in Global communications. However postal authorities and airlines are facing challenges due to the absence of regulation tools for invoicing and settlement charges. In partnership with IATA postal and aviation industry are working to overcome these problems by means of the creation of a PASS (Postal Account Settlement System). The PASS will create standard invoices to postal operators with automated invoicing and payment processes, make easy the reconciliation process and allow dispute resolution.

Partnership- Postal Accounts Settlement System (PASS) Solution

IATA is working with and for the industry to build up a solution to conquer a number of the present in-competencies related with invoicing and remittances associated to mail. The very first PASS workshop was held on 8-9 February 2018 with eight key airlines (Cathay Pacific, American Airlines, Lufthansa Cargo, Emirates, Scandinavian Airlines, Qantas Airways, United Airlines, Swiss Airlines) and seven crucial Postal Operators (USPS, China Post, La Poste France, Deutsche Post, Correos Post Spain, österreichische Post, Swiss Post) meeting to start vital business requirement and to look into prospects for a settlement platform to determine long-outstanding issues.
The PASS proposal will be flexible in nature to meet all present mutual commercial relationship requirements. It will be compliance with the IATA and Universal Postal Union (UPU) standards. It will offer an interface with IPC (International Post Corporation) when appropriate. It will create a combined or group billings and provide flexible settlement options, as opted by the participants.

Key Benefits for Postal Operators And Airlines:

• A direct collaboration between postal companies and airlines will provide a new business opportunities to generate new business.
• Facilitating postal operators to house electronic data interchange with several airlines to standardizing processes, outputs, and online dispute functionality pacing up the overall practice.
• The PASS will offer a single platform for distribution, production and reception of standardized electronic invoices in several formats and providing a combines billing.
• It will enhance the improvement in invoice accuracy and minimize data errors.
• Optional account reconciliation function to the postal companies.
• And Production of postal industry statistics.