ACAS takeoff

U.S. Customs and Border Protection is expected to soon release a draft strategic plan for taking its Air Cargo Advanced Screening system from a limited pilot program to a mandatory requirement that carriers pre-file information on all air shipments bound for the United States, according to industry representatives and government officials involved in the project.
   Publication of the program blueprint comes as the security program prepares to enter its second phase, with several passenger carriers and freight forwarders joining express carriers in transmitting pre-departure cargo data to Customs for threat analysis.
   CBP has received more than 12 million security transmissions through the ACAS pilot in the first year and less than 1 percent of them have required some follow-up intervention to resolve uncertainty, Dan Baldwin, CBP’s executive director of cargo and conveyance security, said at the quarterly meeting of the Commercial Operations Advisory Committee (COAC) on Feb. 21.