Ask most people where air cargo’s safety risk sits, and they will picture the airport: the X-ray machine, the screening line, the handler checking a pallet before it goes airside. It is a reassuring image, and it is largely the wrong one. According to new figures from IATA, the overwhelming majority of dangerous-goods incidents don’t originate at the airport at all. They originate far upstream, in a warehouse, on a marketplace listing, in a shipping label, long before anyone at the airport has a chance to catch them.
On 24 September 2026, IATA used its position representing the industry to make an uncomfortable point plainly: security screening alone cannot solve the problem of undeclared and misdeclared dangerous goods. For any business shipping by air, that reframes where the real work of safety and compliance actually happens, and it puts a spotlight on the part of the chain ACC lives in every day.
The Number That Should Change How You Think About Screening
The headline figure is stark, and it is worth sitting with.
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80% of the dangerous-goods incidents reported to IATA in the first half of 2025 involved undeclared or hidden goods. In other words, the danger overwhelmingly comes not from goods that were declared and handled wrongly, but from goods the system never knew were dangerous in the first place.
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The most common offenders are ordinary. IATA points to lithium batteries, concealed e-cigarettes and undeclared aerosols as the items that turn up hidden inside shipments most often, everyday products, not exotic chemicals.
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This is an industry-wide view, not a one-carrier sample. IATA represents over 370 airlines accounting for roughly 85% of global air traffic, so the pattern reflects the system as a whole.
The significance is simple. Airport screening was built primarily to stop deliberate security threats, to catch the rogue actor. It was never designed to read the mind of a shipper who has labelled a box of power banks as “accessories”. If four in five incidents start with a bad declaration, then a screening machine at the end of the journey is the last place you would want your only line of defence to sit.
Why the Airport Is the Wrong Place to Catch It
IATA’s Global Head of Cargo, Brendan Sullivan, set out the logic without hedging: “Dangerous goods are transported safely by air every day. The risk comes when they enter the system undeclared or incorrectly declared. Every part of the supply chain has a role to play in identifying and stopping such incidents as soon as possible. Security screening, which is primarily focused on terror threats, is one layer of protection against rogue shippers, but it is not a complete solution. A comprehensive multi-layer approach beginning as far upstream the supply chain as possible is essential.”
The practical problem is one of information. By the time a shipment reaches the airport, the people best placed to catch a mistake, the ones who packed it and described it, are long gone, and everyone downstream is working from whatever the paperwork says. If the paperwork is wrong, the whole chain inherits the error blind.
That blindness has a name in the freight world, and the boom in low-value e-commerce has made it worse. As Justus Klüver-Schlotfeldt, CEO of e-commerce network NeX, put it: “By the time a parcel reaches a forwarder, handler or airline, it can be extremely difficult to determine from a description such as ‘electronics’, ‘accessory’ or ‘toy’ whether there is a lithium battery inside.” A free-text description is not data you can validate. It is a guess you are forced to trust.
What “Upstream” Actually Means for a Shipment
IATA’s answer is not a single fix but a layered one, with a clear job for every link in the chain.
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Governments are asked to strengthen oversight and enforcement across cargo supply chains, so that the rules have teeth.
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Manufacturers and online marketplaces are asked to ensure goods are correctly identified and certified, with accurate product information at the source, the earliest point at which a lithium battery can be flagged as a lithium battery.
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Shippers, freight forwarders and postal operators are asked to strengthen training and acceptance controls, and to use shipment data to identify high-risk cargo before it ever reaches the airport.
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Airlines and ground handlers are asked to enhance their checks before loading, and airports to improve coordination and information sharing across the cargo community.
Read that list from a shipper’s seat and one layer stands out: the forwarder. It is the point where a shipment’s description, packaging and documentation are turned into something an airline can accept with confidence, or where a bad declaration slips through unchallenged. Get that layer right and most of the risk is caught while it is still cheap and safe to catch. Get it wrong and you are relying on a screening machine to do a job it was never built for.
The ACC Read: Compliance Is a Data Job, and It Starts With Acceptance
This is squarely the territory a neutral broker exists to manage, and it connects directly to something ACC has argued before: in modern air cargo, safety and compliance are increasingly problems of data integrity, not muscle. You cannot screen your way out of a bad declaration. You can only prevent it upstream.
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Acceptance controls are the real safety layer. The moment a shipment is booked is the moment to ask the awkward questions, what is actually in the box, is there a battery, is it packed and marked to the current IATA Dangerous Goods Regulations, does the documentation match the goods. ACC treats that acceptance check as part of the service, not a formality.
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Correct classification protects everyone, including you. A misdeclared shipment is not just a safety hazard; it is your legal and financial exposure. Fines, offloads, delays and liability flow back to the party whose paperwork was wrong. Getting the declaration right the first time is the cheapest insurance in the business.
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Neutrality means we optimise the whole picture. Because ACC is a neutral broker tied to no single carrier, we can match your cargo to the routing and carrier whose dangerous-goods acceptance, handling and network actually fit what you are shipping, rather than forcing an awkward shipment through the only door on offer.
The shippers who will feel the coming tightening least are the ones who already treat declaration as a discipline. As regulators, marketplaces and carriers all push detection upstream, “we didn’t know” will stop being an acceptable answer. The businesses that build clean, accurate, data-rich shipping practices now, usually alongside a broker who does this daily, will move their freight faster and with less friction than those who leave it to the X-ray at the end of the line.
The Bottom Line
IATA’s message is a useful corrective to a comfortable assumption. Air cargo is remarkably safe, and it stays that way not because of one machine at the airport but because of a chain of people declaring, packing and checking goods correctly at every step. The weak link is almost always the first one, a shipment that entered the system wearing the wrong label. Fixing that is not glamorous work, but it is where the safety, and the savings, genuinely live. The airport can only catch what it can see; everything else depends on getting the declaration right long before the freight leaves your dock.
Ship It Right the First Time
If you move batteries, electronics, aerosols, chemicals or e-commerce consignments by air, or you simply want confidence that your declarations would survive scrutiny, talk to ACC before you book, not after something is offloaded. We will pressure-test your classifications, documentation and packaging against the current regulations, and route your freight to the carrier and gateway best suited to handle it safely. Clean shipments move faster. Let’s keep yours moving.
Sources: IATA, “Cargo Screening Alone Cannot Solve Undeclared Dangerous Goods Risk” (24 September 2026) · The Loadstar, “IATA calls for earlier cargo checks, but poor data leaves forwarders blind” (Alex Lennane, 25 September 2026) · Air Cargo News (24 September 2026)
