Air Cargo Flight Cut-Off and ULD Build-Up Board

At an airport cargo terminal, every outbound flight has an acceptance cut-off, and freight that is not booked, accepted, screened and built onto unit load devices (ULDs) in time can miss the aircraft. This MoveTheWheels concept illustrates an Export build-up board for one cargo shed, designed for terminal supervisors to use beside the terminal's cargo handling system rather than in place of it.

Late in a shift, the question is rarely whether a flight is behind but why. A freighter can be short on accepted weight, waiting on screening, missing serviceable pallets or short of hands on the build-up floor, and each answer usually sits in a different system. Temperature-sensitive shipments add a second clock: pharmaceuticals or cut flowers left on an open dock can lose condition long before the flight leaves.

The illustration shows the board under Tracking, with a date chip and an Export and Import switch. Tiles count flights due before a late-evening hour, flights at risk of cut-off, cool-chain alerts and unserviceable ULDs. An Outbound flights table lists each departure with its cut-off time, booked, accepted and screened weight, ULDs built against planned, and a status of Ready, On track or At risk, and the at-risk freighter shows a countdown to its cut-off. A Temperature-sensitive panel for that flight lists each shipment with its commodity and location: a pharma shipment with its temperature range sits on the dock with a red minutes badge and a Move to cool room action, while cut flowers in a cool room are marked OK. A side panel lists the flight's ULDs as built, damaged, at a partner shed or serviceable in store, with Swap unit actions.

Three other Burdenoff products feed the board by design. Bookings and acceptance are designed to arrive from the cargo system through FluidGrids, as a note above the flights table states. ULD serviceability and whereabouts are designed to come from AssetHandler: two units with damaged bases carry AssetHandler work orders and one held at a partner shed shows AssetHandler custody, so the planner can swap in a serviceable unit before build-up starts. A Build-up crew on shift strip is designed to come from CrewFoundry, with a crew count for the shift and a row of crew avatars. The design also envisions drawing landside truck arrivals from the MoveTheWheels dock schedule, so that dock doors can be weighed alongside units and people when a flight falls behind.