What Is Cargo-IMP?
Cargo Interchange Message Procedures (Cargo-IMP) is the messaging standard maintained by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) that defines how airlines, freight forwarders, ground-handling agents, and customs authorities exchange electronic cargo data. The standard covers dozens of message types, but the most widely used is the FWB (Freight Waybill) message, which represents the electronic version of the paper air waybill.
Cargo-IMP originated in the 1970s when IATA's Cargo Services Conference (CSC) recognised the need for a machine-readable format to replace telex-era free-text communication. Over the decades the standard has evolved through numbered revisions — FWB/11, FWB/13, FWB/15 — with the current production version being FWB/16, published in the IATA Cargo-IMP Manual (CIMP) and the companion Cargo-XML schemas.
Governance of Cargo-IMP sits with the IATA Cargo Operations Advisory Group (COAG) and the broader CSC. Proposed changes go through a ballot process among IATA member airlines before being adopted. Airlines that fail to comply with the current version risk interline messaging failures and rejection by destination customs systems such as the US ACE, EU ICS2, or Thailand's NSW.
KabyTech's document-intelligence pipeline supports FWB versions 13 through 16, automatically detecting the version marker in the Standard Message Identifier (SMI) line and applying the correct parsing rules for that version.
FWB Message Structure — 29 Sections
An FWB message is a fixed-position, line-oriented text format. Each line begins with a three-character line identifier (e.g., AWB, SHP, CNE) followed by data fields separated by slashes. The full FWB/16 specification defines 29 sections, each carrying a distinct category of shipment data.
The 29 sections, in order, are:
| # | Identifier | Section Name | Mandatory |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | SMI | Standard Message Identifier | Yes |
| 2 | AWB | Air Waybill Number | Yes |
| 3 | FLT | Flight Bookings | Yes |
| 4 | RTG | Routing | Yes |
| 5 | SHP | Shipper Name & Address | Yes |
| 6 | CNE | Consignee Name & Address | Yes |
| 7 | AGT | Agent | No |
| 8 | SSR | Special Service Request | No |
| 9 | NFY | Also-Notify Party | No |
| 10 | ACC | Accounting Information | No |
| 11 | CVD | Charges / Valuation | Yes |
| 12 | RTD | Rate Description | Yes |
| 13 | OTH | Other Charges | No |
| 14 | PPD | Prepaid Charges Summary | Conditional |
| 15 | CLL | Collect Charges Summary | Conditional |
| 16 | CDC | Charges at Destination | No |
| 17 | ISU | Carrier Execution | Yes |
| 18 | OSI | Other Service Information | No |
| 19 | CER | Certificate / Regulation | No |
| 20 | OCI | Other Customs Information | No |
| 21 | SRI | Shipment Reference Info | No |
| 22 | NOM | Nominated Handling Party | No |
| 23 | COR | Corrections | No |
| 24 | CIQ | Customs/Immigration/Quarantine | No |
| 25 | HBS | House Bill Summary | No |
| 26 | TXT | Free-Form Text | No |
| 27 | REF | Reference Numbers | No |
| 28 | COM | Commodity Code | No |
| 29 | EOM | End of Message | Yes |
Sections marked Mandatory must be present in every valid FWB message. PPD and CLL are conditionally mandatory — at least one must appear depending on prepaid/collect payment. Optional sections may be omitted entirely or repeated (e.g., multiple OCI lines).
Mandatory Fields and Validation Rules
Within each section, individual data elements have their own mandatory/optional status and format rules. Key validation points include:
DDMMMYY format (e.g., 15MAR26) or the DDMMM short form for flight dates.FWB/16 introduced stricter customs-data requirements in the OCI section to comply with advance cargo information (ACI) programmes such as EU ICS2, US ACAS, and ASEAN Single Window. Specifically, the shipper and consignee must include postal code and country code where applicable, and house-level data is expected in the HBS section.
KabyTech flags validation errors at three severity levels: Error (message will be rejected by airline/customs), Warning (non-conformance that may cause downstream issues), and Info (best-practice recommendation).
FWB/16 vs Earlier Versions
The transition from FWB/15 to FWB/16 brought several important changes that affect both message parsing and business workflows:
- Expanded OCI sub-types: FWB/16 added new OCI qualifier codes to support EU ICS2 Phase 2 and US ACAS pre-loading data requirements, including Trader Identification Numbers (TIN) and Unique Consignment Reference (UCR).
- House Bill Summary (HBS): While technically present in FWB/15, the HBS section became more structured in FWB/16 with defined sub-fields for house waybill number, piece count, and weight at the house level.
- Extended character set: FWB/16 expanded the permissible character set to include accented Latin characters, enabling better representation of non-English shipper/consignee names without resorting to transliteration.
- Harmonised SHP/CNE fields: The shipper and consignee sections gained additional sub-fields for structured address data (street, city, state, postal code, country) aligned with the WCO Data Model.
KabyTech's parser detects the FWB version from the SMI line (e.g., FWB/16) and automatically switches field-length constraints, required-section checks, and OCI qualifier validation to match the declared version. Documents that omit the version marker default to FWB/16 parsing with a warning.
For organisations still transmitting FWB/13 or FWB/15, KabyTech provides an optional up-conversion module that maps older-version fields to FWB/16 equivalents and highlights any missing mandatory data that must be supplied before transmission.
Summary
IATA Cargo-IMP and the FWB message format remain the backbone of electronic air waybill data exchange worldwide. Key takeaways:
- Cargo-IMP is governed by IATA's Cargo Services Conference and updated through formal ballot among member airlines.
- The FWB message is a fixed-position text format with 29 defined sections, of which 8 are mandatory in every message.
- FWB/16 strengthened customs-data requirements (OCI, HBS) to comply with global advance cargo information programmes.
- Validation must cover AWB check digits, airport code lookups, arithmetic balancing of charges, and version-specific field rules.
- KabyTech parses all 29 sections across FWB versions 13–16, performs multi-level validation, and offers up-conversion from older versions.
For integration details, refer to the KabyTech API documentation on the /parse/fwb endpoint, which accepts raw Cargo-IMP text and returns structured JSON with validation results.