Air freight clearance

Nobody pays air freight rates for cargo that is not urgent, and that sets the standard for the customs work. An air entry either clears within hours of the aircraft touching down or the reason the shipment flew has been wasted. The difference is almost never CBP. It is whether the paperwork was ready before the flight landed and whether the house bill matched.

What has to be in place before the aircraft is

Air cargo is screened long before it flies. The carrier or the forwarder transmits an advance data set to CBP ahead of loading at the last foreign departure point, and a referral at that stage can stop the freight being loaded at all. That obligation is not ours, but its consequences land in our inbox, so we want the shipper details, the piece count and a real description at booking.

Once the flight is airborne, the master air waybill and every house bill under it have to be on file in the air manifest system before a release can be transmitted against them. This is the single most common reason an air shipment sits: the entry is finished, the duty is calculated, and the house bill has simply not been reported by the deconsolidator yet. We watch for it and chase the airline cargo desk and the bonded warehouse directly.

Regulated cargo runs on a shorter fuse by air

FDA Prior Notice for food arriving by air is due no less than four hours before arrival, against eight hours for ocean and two hours for road. That is a narrow window when a document set lands at eleven at night for a six in the morning arrival, and a late Prior Notice means the shipment is refused entry until it is corrected and resubmitted. Pharmaceutical, biologic, medical device and live animal freight each carry their own message set and their own reviewer. We file those alongside the entry, not after it. Prior Notice timing.

Perishables are where hours turn into losses. Fresh produce, seafood and temperature-controlled pharma sit in a cooler that bills by the kilo while a hold is open, and the product degrades whether or not anyone is reading the file. We flag those shipments when we file and tell you the same day an agency stops one.

Air freight is not dutiable, if the invoice lets us prove it

The United States appraises imported goods on the price paid for the goods themselves. International freight and insurance are not part of that price, so where a sale is made on a CIF or CIP basis and the freight is separately identified, it comes out of the dutiable value. On ocean freight that adjustment is worth a few percent. On air freight it can be a fifth to a third of the invoice total, because you paid to move weight through the sky.

A single CIF number with no freight breakdown means duty is paid on the airline bill as well as on the goods. Ask your supplier to split the line. It costs nothing and it is money back on every shipment.

The 2026 duty picture on air cargo

Air cargo used to be where low-value shipments escaped duty entirely. That is over. The $800 administrative exemption was suspended in 2025 and the simplified entry type built to process those parcels went with it. Consignments waved through on a manifest last year now need an entry, a classification and a bond behind them, which is why parcel programmes became a brokerage problem overnight. How we run high-volume parcel filing.

Everything else applies to air exactly as it applies to a container. Section 232 metal content is declared on the melt and pour or smelt and cast country, Section 301 list duty follows the classification of China-origin goods, and AD/CVD scope does not care that the goods flew. On aerospace parts, electronics and machinery components the correct ten digits are worth more than the freight, and a classification guessed at midnight becomes a post-summary correction later. Reading an HTS code.

Where air entries go wrong

• The master waybill is not transmitted. The flight is on the ground and the airline has not reported. Until it does, there is nothing to file a release against.
• The house bill does not match. A consolidation broken at the warehouse produces a house number or a piece count that differs from what was booked. The release rejects and stays rejected until the manifest and the entry agree.
• The shipment flew short. Part of the freight was offloaded for weight and follows on the next flight. The entry has to reflect what actually arrived, not what was invoiced.
• Storage starts fast. Free time in an airline warehouse is commonly a day or two, then storage accrues by weight per day. That is why a two-day document delay costs more on air than the same delay costs on a container.

What we need from you

• Master air waybill and house air waybill numbers, the flight and the estimated arrival.
• Commercial invoice with unit prices, currency, Incoterm and country of origin per line, and the international freight and insurance shown separately if the sale is CIF or CIP.
• Packing list with piece count and gross weight per piece.
• Partner-agency data where it applies: FDA registration and product codes, the FSVP importer, APHIS permits, DOT or EPA declarations.
• A bond in place before the flight lands, not after. See customs bonds.

Newark Liberty and JFK are on our doorstep in Linden, New Jersey, and we file at every other US international airport on the same terms.