CUSTOMS COMPLETES UPGRADE TO AIR AMS

CUSTOMS COMPLETES UPGRADE TO AIR AMS    U.S. Customs finished long-awaited upgrades to its Air Automated Manifest System over the weekend.
   “The changes went through very well,” said John Hill, director of trade systems at Customs’ Office of Information and Technology. “We corrected a backlog of three to four years worth of problems.”
   Customs had attempted to upgrade the Air AMS module of its Automated Commercial System in February, but it pulled back at the last minute when a problem was discovered. During the past four months, the agency made further corrections and resumed testing the upgrades.
   The three biggest aspects of the Air AMS upgrade were:
   * Installation of IBM message-queuing (MQ) communication software.
   * Improvements to maintenance capabilities.
   * Corrections to about 50 software problems.
   “We believe we now have a platform that’s going to be stable for a fair amount of time to come,” Hill said.
   The airline industry said it’s pleased so far with the results of Customs’ Air AMS upgrades.
   “The early indications show that some minor issues with the system have been taken care of,” said Michael R. White, director of facilitation for the Air Transport Association. “We’ll learn more over the next week as the air carriers put the software into real-time use.”