Cargo-IMP and Cargo-XML are two IATA messaging standards for the same air-cargo data. Cargo-IMP is the legacy, positional EDI format — fixed fields, teletype heritage — that the industry has run on for decades. Cargo-XML is the modern XML-based replacement IATA is steering everyone toward. Most carriers and handlers still ingest Cargo-IMP today, so in practice both are in play.
The message you know as FWB (air waybill data) has a form in each: FWB in Cargo-IMP, XFWB in Cargo-XML; the house-manifest FHL becomes XFHL. Same information, two encodings. IMP is compact and unforgiving — a field is defined by its position, so a stray character shifts everything after it. XML is verbose but self-describing and easier to validate, which is a big part of why IATA has been moving the industry to it.
Why the industry is mid-migration
IATA has been steering air cargo from Cargo-IMP to Cargo-XML for years, but a global network of carriers, forwarders, and ground handlers doesn't switch all at once. Each party upgrades on its own timeline, so IMP and XML coexist — and will for a while yet. A forwarder can't assume one or the other; the partner on the receiving end decides which they accept. It's the same reason two FWB versions coexist — standards move faster than the systems that read them.
With , you can hold one clean, validated record that's ready for whatever encoding your partner accepts.
Start hereWhat this means for your data
The safe position is to hold one clean, validated record and emit whatever encoding a given partner needs. If your data only exists as a Cargo-IMP FWB, moving to a partner on Cargo-XML means re-deriving it; if it lives as a structured record, the encoding is just an output step. The rule is the same one that keeps every format in agreement: extract and validate once, emit to the format on the other end.
Cargo-IMP → FWB # positional EDI · legacy, still widely used Cargo-XML → XFWB # XML · IATA's modern standard # AWBGuru today: extract + validate once, then emit # Cargo-IMP FWB/16 or FWB/17 — plus JSON · XML · CSV · XLSX from the same record
Where AWBGuru sits
AWBGuru extracts and validates a waybill into one structured record and generates the Cargo-IMP FWB — version 16 or 17 — from it today, alongside JSON, XML, CSV, and XLSX. Because everything reads from one validated record, the encoding is a formatting decision, not a re-keying one. As partners move to Cargo-XML, the thing that matters is that the underlying record is already clean and validated — the format on the wire is the last step, not the hard part.