Early JUN25, ground handling agent dnata moved its Amsterdam operation to its new state-of-the-art facility at Schiphol Zuid-Oost. Apparently, its advanced technology does not live up to expectations, causing chaos at the airport.
According to the sectorial council, ‘Truckers’, within the umbrella organization, Air Cargo Netherlands (ACN), dnata’s move has led to enormously long waiting times and backlogs. “The uncoordinated implementation of the Truck Visit Management system has shifted the gate waiting times from the handler to the trucker,” the truckers say.
“Over the last few weeks, large quantities of cargo have been buffered up with the hauliers, because delivery at dnata was impossible. This is a shift of functions within the chain for which no financial agreements have been made.”
According to the truckers’ council, the problem coincides with the implementation of a new IT system at KLM, leading to flights being missed. Minor problems have also been identified with other handlers.
Bar was set too high
ACN’s Director Maarten van As says that, as far as dnata is concerned, the promised far-reaching digitized system supposed to create communication between different digital systems and enabling a seamless flow is not working so far.
“dnata at the notification for the collection of import freight was not functioning well, and a lot of data had to be put in again manually in the Cargonaut port community system.”
“So, instead of the promised step into the digital future, the ground handler’s new working methods were felt as a step backward. At the same time, we saw that the new planning system linked to other internal systems led to unacceptably long waiting times at the dnata gate as well as the premises. In the meantime, an enormous backlog of import cargo was created, and airlines were complaining about a dysfunctional export flow.”
Temporary solution
“At the moment, the industry is in talks with dnata to reach practical solutions. Reaching out to each other and finding solutions as colleagues is one of the strongest points of the Schiphol air cargo community, and we are pleased to act as a mediator in this.”
“We find that, at dnata, individual workers, are working very hard to find (temporary) solutions. As a system, however, dnata has failed. I expect talks about solution paths to lead to something in the days to come. Not the ‘golden bullet’, but an alleviation of the dnata system into a space to work towards genuine solutions,” ACN Chief Maarten van As told CargoForwarder Global.
The hiccups in Amsterdam are the second setback for dnata in Europe, following the announcement that it will cease all ground handling activities at Cologne/Bonn Airport at the end of 2025.
