Air Cargo Editing and Proofreading Services

A consignment of cosmetics is booked as general cargo. It contains aerosols and perfume, both of which are dangerous goods by air, and the shipper has ticked a box saying it is not. The aircraft is loaded, the error is found at a transit hub, and what follows is an offload, an investigation, a fine, and a shipper who genuinely did not know that hairspray is a hazard at altitude.

We edit what air cargo operators, forwarders and shippers produce — dangerous goods declarations and the guidance around them, shipper's declarations and their instructions, air waybill and booking documentation, acceptance and rejection notices, embargo and restriction communications, security declarations, and the material used to tell customers what they may and may not send. Our editors work on forms where a wrong tick grounds an aircraft.

The dangerous goods declaration and the guidance that precedes it is where air cargo safety actually lives, and its failure is a form that assumes the shipper knows what they are shipping. Most undeclared dangerous goods are sent by people who do not know the rules exist. We work through these so the guidance names the ordinary items that are restricted rather than describing hazard classes, since "flammable liquids, class 3" means nothing to a cosmetics company and "perfume, nail varnish, hand sanitiser, aerosols of any kind" means everything; so the question is asked in the shipper's own vocabulary — what is actually in the box — rather than as a declaration to be agreed; so the consequences are stated plainly for the shipper personally, given that the responsibility sits with them and most believe it sits with the airline; so lithium batteries are addressed separately and prominently, as they are the single largest source of undeclared goods and are inside things nobody thinks of as batteries; so the declaration form's fields are explained where a shipper will guess — the packing group, the net quantity, the packing instruction; so anything the operator will not carry at all is listed by name; so the acceptance check is described so a shipper knows what will be looked at; and so the rejection notice explains what to change rather than only refusing. Documents written this way keep undeclared goods off aircraft.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including shipment records, incident reports and regulatory correspondence. We are editors rather than dangerous goods specialists, regulators or trainers, and we offer no view on classification, acceptance or compliance. What we can do is ask the shipper a question they can answer correctly.