Around 100 car seats needed to be transported quickly from Tunisia to Germany. Time was tight, ruling out the usual sea route via containers. There wasn’t enough belly space for freight on passenger aircraft to meet the demand in time. Additionally, import customs clearance in Frankfurt am Main would have taken too long. This was just the kind of challenge MBS Anytime was designed to handle.

Solution

To transport the 100 car seats from Tunisia to Germany, MBS Anytime arranged for the seats to travel as OBC luggage in the cargo hold of a passenger plane. The aircraft was flying from Tunis to Frankfurt am Main, and this approach was possible because passenger baggage takes priority over freight. By flying the seats as luggage, several complex steps typical for freight transport could be bypassed, including storage in a customs warehouse, applying for a customs number and subsequent customs clearance at the freight center. Instead, MBS Anytime registered the consignment electronically, printed out the routing slip and brought it to the airport. At the airport, an MBS Anytime employee took custody of the car seats in the transit area and presented them to the customs officers responsible for baggage handling, expediting the entire process.

Result

The seats arrived at the factory in Ingolstadt just in time for assembly. The customs and police officers at the baggage carousels in Frankfurt’s Rhine-Main Airport contributed to this smooth process. They helped load three seats at a time from the carousel onto a baggage trolley, streamlining the transfer. The strong working relationship built over many years between Anytime employees and the authorities once again proved valuable.