FIATA, the International Federation of Freight Forwarders Associations, has invoked a formal review mechanism to challenge changes to the Direct Air Waybill (DAWB) framework adopted at the recent International Air Transport Association (IATA) Cargo Agency Conference.
The waybill is the foundational legal document governing the movement of goods by air, setting out the terms of carriage between airlines, freight forwarders and shippers.
What Is Changing — and Why Does It Matter?
The reforms, backed by IATA, significantly alter how contractual responsibilities, liabilities and indemnities are distributed across the air cargo supply chain. Airlines have argued the changes are necessary to improve compliance, due diligence and risk visibility — concerns that FIATA says it recognises as legitimate.
But the organisation says the way those changes have been designed and rushed through creates a far more serious problem: freight forwarders could find themselves exposed to substantially greater legal liability even in cases where they acted purely as agents for a shipper and had no direct control over the cargo or the information attached to it.
In plain terms, companies could be held responsible for things that were not within their power to control.
A Process Condemned as Too Fast
FIATA’s central complaint is not merely about the substance of the reforms, but about how they were developed and approved.
The proposals were only communicated to the freight forwarding community in January 2026, leaving a matter of weeks before regional consultations took place. The changes were subsequently adopted with what FIATA describes as a limited opportunity for proper legal, operational or insurance assessment — and with an implementation date of 1 July 2026 that the organisation says is simply too soon.
“Proposals of this scale and significance require sufficient opportunity for legal, operational and insurance assessment across affected sectors of the global industry,” FIATA said in its formal submission.
The organisation has now invoked Article 4.2 of IATA CAC Resolution 801c, triggering the IATA-FIATA Consultative Council (IFCC) review mechanism — a formal process designed to allow structured reassessment of decisions of this kind.
Insurers Sound the Alarm
One of the more striking aspects of the dispute is the involvement of the insurance industry. Insurers who participated in FIATA’s global consultations warned that if liability is extended to parties who do not actually control the cargo or its associated documentation, the risks involved may become difficult — or in some cases impossible — to insure in the conventional sense.
That has implications not just for freight forwarders, but for the entire chain of companies involved in moving goods by air, including the shippers whose cargo is at stake.
The Broader Context
The dispute is landing at a particularly uncomfortable moment for the air freight industry. Geopolitical tensions, trade tariff uncertainty and ongoing disruption to key shipping routes have already placed global supply chains under significant strain in 2026.
FIATA argues that introducing sweeping changes to the legal foundations of air cargo documentation in this environment — without broad consensus and without adequate time for assessment — risks compounding an already difficult situation.
Shippers and their representatives have echoed those concerns, warning that the proposed changes could disrupt existing claims handling arrangements, trigger disputes over contractual responsibility and undermine the legal predictability that international trade depends upon.
What FIATA Is Asking For
FIATA is calling for a structured review of both the content of the reforms and their implementation timeline, to be conducted through the IFCC with the full participation of freight forwarders, shippers and insurers.
The organisation says any revised framework must be legally coherent, operationally workable and consistent with established international liability rules — including the Montreal Convention, the international treaty that governs airline liability for cargo.
FIATA has been careful to frame its position as constructive rather than obstructive, stating that it remains committed to working with IATA to find solutions that address airlines’ underlying concerns without creating new legal uncertainty elsewhere in the supply chain.
Whether IATA will agree to pause the 1 July implementation date remains to be seen. With less than five weeks until the changes are due to take effect, the window for resolution is narrowing rapidly.