RCS means the consignment has been physically received from the shipper or the shipper's agent and is considered by the carrier ready for carriage, on the stated date at the stated location. It is typically the first status recorded in a shipment's life cycle.

RCF means the consignment has been physically received from a given flight, or the surface transport of a given airline, on the stated date at the stated location. It is the code used at an interline or trucking handoff, and is distinct from RCT (received from this carrier) and RCS (received from the shipper).

What is the difference between FSU and FSA?

FSU is a short, two-page chapter in the Cargo-IMP manual that is essentially a stub: its own notes state that FSU's format is the same as the FSA message, and that FSU's message examples and full field-by-field specification are all found in the FSA (Status Answer) chapter instead. Operationally, FSR requests a status, FSA answers that request, and FSU pushes a status update unrequested.

NFD means the consignee, or the consignee's agent, has been notified — on the stated date, at the stated location — of the arrival of the consignment. In the underlying message grammar this status carries the day, month, and time the notification was given, plus the airport code of where it happened.

How many FSU status codes are there?

21. They are defined in the Cargo-IMP manual's Code List Grid, §1.18: DIS, AWD, AWR, NFD, ARR, BKD, CCD, TRM, MAN, DLV, DDL, RCF, RCS, RCT, TFD, PRE, CRC, TGC, DEP, FOH, and DOC.

What Is the FSU Message? Air Cargo Status Codes

Q: What is the FSU message?

FSU (Status Update) is the Cargo-IMP message a handling party — an airline, ground handler, Customs authority, or ULD control point — sends to notify interested parties of a status recorded against a consignment. It is sent by bilateral agreement whenever that status has been recorded in the sender's system, for the whole shipment or a part shipment, and it carries one status code per event.

What the FSU message does

FSU stands for Status Update — the Cargo-IMP message a handling party (an airline, a ground handler, a Customs or ULD control point) sends to notify interested parties that a status has been recorded against a consignment. It is sent by bilateral agreement, for the whole shipment or a part shipment, whenever that particular status has been recorded in the sending party’s system.

Every FSU carries one status event, identified by a three-letter status code — RCS, DEP, ARR, DLV, and so on — plus the date, time, and location at which it happened, and it is always sent against a specific air waybill. String enough FSUs together for one AWB and you get the shipment’s full journey: booked, received, departed, arrived, delivered. This is, in practical terms, the message behind every air cargo track-and-trace screen.

The complete status code table

The Cargo-IMP manual’s Code List Grid (§1.18) defines all 21 status codes used across the FSU and FSA messages, each with an official one-line meaning:

Code	What it marks	Plain-English meaning
RCS	Received from Shipper	The consignment has been physically received from the shipper or the shipper’s agent and is considered ready for carriage, at this date and location.
RCF	Received from Flight	The consignment has been physically received from a given flight, or the surface transport of a given airline.
RCT	Received from Carrier	The consignment has been physically received from this carrier at this date and location.
DEP	Departed	The consignment has physically departed this location, on this scheduled date and flight, for transport to the arrival location.
ARR	Arrived	The consignment has arrived on a scheduled flight at this location.
DLV	Delivered	The consignment has been physically delivered to the consignee or the consignee’s agent on this date at this location.
DDL	Delivered to Door	The consignment has been physically delivered to the consignee’s door on this date at this location.
NFD	Notified of Arrival	The consignee, or the consignee’s agent, has been notified, on this date at this location, of the arrival of the consignment.
BKD	Booked	The consignment has been booked for transport between these locations, on this scheduled date and flight.
MAN	Manifested	The consignment has been manifested for this flight, on this scheduled date, for transport between these locations — carried forward on that flight’s FFM manifest.
PRE	Prepared for Loading	The consignment has been prepared for loading on this flight, for transport between these locations, on this scheduled date.
TRM	Transferred	The consignment has been manifested and/or will be physically transferred to the carrier at this location.
TFD	Transferred to Carrier	The consignment has been physically transferred to the carrier on this date at this location.
TGC	Transferred to Customs/Government	The consignment has been transferred to Customs/Government control.
CCD	Customs Cleared	The consignment has been cleared by the Customs authorities on this date at this location.
CRC	Reported to Customs	The consignment has been reported to the Customs authorities on this date at this location.
AWD	Arrival Documentation Delivered	The arrival documentation has been physically delivered to the consignee or the consignee’s agent on this date at this location.
AWR	Arrival Documentation Received	The arrival documentation has been physically received from a scheduled flight at this location.
FOH	Freight on Hand	The consignment is on hand on this date at this location, pending a “ready for carriage” determination.
DOC	Documents Received	Documents have been received by the handling party.
DIS	Discrepancy	An apparent error has occurred, on this date at this location, with the handling of the consignment or its documentation — further clarified by an accompanying discrepancy code.

This table is the single most useful reference on this page: it’s the full answer to “what does status code X mean” for every code Cargo-IMP defines.

The codes you’ll see most

A handful of these 21 codes account for most of the traffic any cargo system actually processes.

RCS (Received from Shipper) is usually the first status a shipment gets. It marks the moment the carrier physically takes possession of the cargo from the shipper or their agent and considers it ready for carriage — the trigger that starts the AWB’s operational life cycle.

RCF (Received from Flight) fires at interline and trucking handoffs, when a consignment is physically received from a given flight or the surface transport of a given airline. It’s easy to confuse with RCT (received from this carrier) and RCS (received from the shipper) — all three share the “received” idea but mark different handoffs.

DEP (Departed) marks physical departure on a specific scheduled flight and date, from one location toward another — the event that turns a booking into cargo actually in the air.

ARR (Arrived) is DEP’s counterpart: the consignment has arrived on a scheduled flight at a given location, whether that’s the final destination or a connection point.

DLV (Delivered) closes out the shipment: physical delivery to the consignee or the consignee’s agent. A related but distinct code, DDL, marks delivery specifically to the consignee’s door.

NFD (Notified of Arrival) is a purely communicative status — it doesn’t move the cargo, it records that the consignee or their agent has been told the shipment arrived, which matters for service-level tracking even before DLV closes the loop.

FSU vs FSA

FSU and FSA are easy to conflate because they share a format, but they play different roles in Cargo-IMP:

FSU (Status Update) is, in the manual itself, essentially a two-page stub. Its own notes say the FSU message’s format is the same as FSA’s, and explicitly defer FSU’s message examples and full field-by-field message specification to the FSA chapter — FSU does not define its own layout.
FSA (Status Answer) is where the real specification lives: the per-code field grammar (movement detail, quantity detail, delivery-to name, and so on) for every one of the 21 status codes above.
The three messages work together as a request/answer/push triad: FSR requests a status, FSA answers that request, and FSU pushes a status update that nobody explicitly asked for — the difference is purely about whether the update was solicited.

Where FSU is heading

FSU is frozen along with the rest of Cargo-IMP at the 34th and final edition. Its XML-era successor is Cargo-XML’s XFSU message, which carries the same 21 status codes in an XML envelope instead of Type B text. The strategic endpoint further out is IATA ONE Record: instead of parties pushing discrete status-update messages back and forth, they share one continuously updated digital record of the shipment, so “status” stops being an event you send and becomes a field you read.

Until that transition completes, FSU traffic is not going away — which is why Skidd ingests, generates, and reconciles FSU events as a native part of handling cargo on the ground, whichever standard your partners are still speaking.