What is IATA ONE Record?

From messages to a shared record

For decades, air cargo ran on electronic data interchange (EDI): partners sent each other a stream of standalone messages — a booking here, a status update there, a manifest somewhere else — using Cargo-IMP and, later, Cargo-XML. Every handoff meant another message, another mapping, and another chance for two parties to hold different versions of the truth.

ONE Record takes the opposite approach. Instead of messaging about a shipment, every party works against one shared record of that shipment. IATA describes it as creating “a single record view of the shipment” through a common data model exchanged over “a standardised and secured web API.” It is explicitly a move beyond EDI and messaging.

The three parts of the standard

ONE Record is not one specification but three that work together:

• A data model — a standard structure for cargo data, published as a semantic-web ontology (RDF/OWL) and exchanged as JSON-LD.
• An API specification — a REST web API that lets partner systems connect and share data directly.
• A security specification — a federated trust network for identity, authentication and data privacy, built on mutual TLS, OAuth2 and OpenID Connect.

The data exchanged uses the namespace https://onerecord.iata.org/ns/cargo#. As of mid-2026 the current published specification is ONE Record API 2.2.0 with cargo data model 3.2.

How the data model works

ONE Record is built on four design principles, and they explain most of what makes it different:

• Piece-centric. The model centres on the piece — a uniquely identified physical unit of cargo — rather than the document. A shipment is a set of pieces, each with its own data and history.
• Digital twin. Data objects mirror physical assets and the physical journey, so the digital record tracks reality.
• Single source of truth. Data is stored once and shared, instead of being re-keyed into each partner’s system.
• Data-driven, not document-driven. Any document — including the air waybill — can be re-created from the underlying data, rather than the data being trapped inside a document.

Everything is modelled as a LogisticsObject: a shipment, piece, booking, waybill or transport movement, each with a unique URI that makes it network-addressable. A clear access model governs who can do what — the object’s Holder can create and update it, while other parties (Users) can read it or submit a change request. This is the foundation of what IATA calls the “Internet of Logistics”: a network where any logistics party can connect and exchange data through standardised APIs, much like the web itself.

ONE Record vs Cargo-IMP and Cargo-XML

ONE Record is the successor to the older EDI standards, not a drop-in replacement for individual messages. Because so much of the industry still runs on Cargo-IMP and Cargo-XML, the transition depends heavily on mapping the old messages to the new data model. IATA publishes those mappings — for example XFWB (the electronic air waybill), XFZB (house waybill), XFSU (status updates) and XFFM (flight manifest) — and open-source and commercial converters exist to bridge the two worlds during migration.

Where ONE Record stands in 2026

The headline milestone: from 1 January 2026, ONE Record became IATA’s preferred method for air cargo data exchange, endorsed by the IATA Cargo Services Conference. It is important to be precise here — preferred and endorsed means a de-facto industry standard, not a legal mandate. Adoption is voluntary.

Momentum is real but uneven. In IATA’s December 2025 industry survey, more than 70% of respondents were aware of ONE Record and nearly 50% reported being prepared for it, and IATA has said airlines representing more than 70% of global air-waybill volume are on track. At the same time, smaller forwarders lag — cited blockers are lack of knowledge and internal resistance to change more than budget — and trade press notes that change management, not technology, is the hard part. IATA has estimated that full adoption could unlock on the order of US$4 billion in industry efficiencies through fewer errors, less manual processing and better disruption handling.

ONE Record, customs and advance cargo data

ONE Record is positioned to feed pre-loading advance cargo information (PLACI) regimes — the US ACAS, the EU ICS2, and similar programmes in the UK, Canada and elsewhere. The data model can carry what regulators need, but as of 2026 governments do not yet broadly accept ONE Record data directly in regulatory filings; IATA lists wider regulatory acceptance as a key next step.

How Flaks uses ONE Record

Flaks is ONE Record–native: bookings, waybills and status events are modelled the ONE Record way, and the public API returns ONE Record JSON-LD by default (application/ld+json). Because the data model is the contract, a carrier on Flaks can speak ONE Record to modern partners and still exchange Cargo-IMP and e-AWB messages with everyone else — no separate migration project required. See the API overview for a live request/response example.