Flaks is the first airline cargo system you can sign up for. Speaks every cargo message your partners send. Open standards from day one. Generous free tier. Replace CHAMP, Unisys, SmartKargo, or IBS in the time it used to take to get them on a call.
Most airlines still run on platforms sold the way enterprise software was sold in 2008: tenders, purchasing committees, on-site hardware, custom integrations per partner, multi-year rollouts. We watched it happen one too many times.
“Cargo is the last enterprise software category that still ships with a CD-ROM mindset. Flaks ships like Stripe.”
Three doors into your cargo system. One for anyone who wants to track a shipment. One for your partners and marketplaces. One for your own team. Every response speaks the open industry standard. Every webhook is signed. The sandbox is always open.
$ curl https://api.flaks.io/agent/v1/bookings \ -H "Authorization: Bearer flk_live_C3z…" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -H "Accept: application/ld+json" \ -d ' "origin": "FRA", "destination": "SIN", "weight_kg": 2450, "pieces": 12, "commodity": "PHA", "shipper": "Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH", "consignee": "DKSH Singapore Pte Ltd", "idempotency_key": "bkg-3a9f-2026-05-13" '
"@context": "https://onerecord.iata.org/ns/cargo", "@type": "cargo:Booking", "@id": "https://1r.flaks.io/lh/bookings/3a9f…", "awb": "020-48217366", "status": "accepted", "cargo:totalGrossWeight": "value": 2450, "unit": "KGM" , "cargo:movement": "@type": "cargo:TransportMovement", "origin": "FRA", "destination": "SIN" , "tracking_url": "https://api.flaks.io/public/v1/awb/020-48217366", "rate_calculation": "chargeable_weight_kg": 2450, "rate_per_kg": 4.85, "currency": "USD", "total": 11882.50
Every change in your system — status updates, schedule changes, new bookings — reaches your partners within seconds. Signed so they trust it. Retried so they never miss it. Stored so nothing gets lost in flight.
# Request headers X-Onerecord-Event cargo.booking.status_changed X-Onerecord-Delivery d_01HQK3F9R7… X-Onerecord-Timestamp 1747143425 X-Onerecord-Signature sha256=7c4a8d09ca37… # Body "@type": "cargo:LogisticsEvent", "eventCode": "DEP", "awb": "160-83491027", "flight": "CX076 / 13MAY", "station": "HKG", "recordedAt": "2026-05-13T15:55:02Z"
Shippers, consignees, anyone with a waybill number. No login needed. Cached for speed.
For marketplaces, forwarders, and the rest of your ecosystem. Keyed and locked-down.
For the people who run your cargo operation. Login required. Every action logged.
Listing on cargo.one or WebCargo is a flip switch. Direct connections to the world's biggest freight forwarders come ready out of the box. Marketplace keys and forwarder keys live in separate worlds — so a leaked marketplace credential is never the same problem as a compromised forwarder key.
Marketplace keys put your capacity, your prices, and your bookings on the platforms where forwarders already shop. Same rate engine as your direct customers — so the marketplaces see exactly the prices you'd offer anywhere else.
Forwarder keys carry the contracts you've signed with each partner — their negotiated rates, their reserved capacity, their special commodities — so your top accounts pay what they were promised, not the marketplace spot price.
One click to create. One click to rotate. The full key is shown once — and never stored where anyone can read it.
Set how much traffic each key can send. Lock keys to known addresses. If anything fails, the request is rejected — never quietly let through.
Revoked keys stop working within a minute. Every change to every key is logged before it takes effect.
The industry's open data standard runs through every booking, shipment, and flight movement. No adapters. No exports. No excuses.
Air waybills, manifests, status updates, house bills — everything your partners already send, accepted, acknowledged, and replied to automatically.
Long-term schedule changes and same-day swaps land directly in the system. Affected bookings get flagged. No spreadsheets, no scrambling.
Waybill numbers issued one at a time, validated against industry rules. Two agents can't grab the same number. Ever.
Your tariffs, contracts, and special-commodity rates in one place. The most specific rate wins. Every quote is locked to the booking, forever.
Waybill and handling labels generated automatically. Send them straight to your warehouse printers or hand them to your ground handler.
Every change in your system reaches your partners within seconds. Signed so they trust it. Retried so they never miss it.
Behaves exactly like production. Test bookings never leak out to partners. Cleaned up automatically. No surprise message storms.
Every airline's data lives in its own walled garden, enforced where it counts. One bug can never leak data between carriers.
Industry settlement files generated directly from your bookings. Every two weeks, in exactly the format the clearing houses expect.
Every administrative action is logged before it happens. The log can't be altered — not even by us. Compliance officers love it.
Bring your own booking portal — the API is yours to use. Or use the one we ship. Either way, you're never locked in.
Vendors named here are not bad products — many are battle-tested for the airlines they serve. They are simply not shaped like modern SaaS. That is the gap Flaks exists to close.
| Capability | Flaks v0.0.1 | Legacy
CHAMP · Unisys · SmartKargo · IBS · Hermes · Mercator
|
|---|---|---|
| 01 How you sign up | + In your browser, this afternoon | − Tender, six to eighteen months |
| 02 What it costs | + Free to start. Pay per waybill. | − Six-figure license plus maintenance |
| 03 Open data standard | + Built in from day one | − Add-on, often still on the roadmap |
| 04 Public API | + Fully documented and free to read | − Behind a non-disclosure agreement |
| 05 Multiple airlines on one system | + Day one. Walled off from each other. | − One installation per airline |
| 06 Where it runs | + In the cloud, everywhere we're needed | − Your server room or theirs |
| 07 How often it improves | + New features every week | − Quarterly updates with downtime |
| 08 Sandbox | + Always on. Never billed extra. | − A staging copy, often charged for |
| 09 Bring your own front-end | + Yes. The API is yours. | − Their interface, or nothing |
| 10 Documentation | + Public and versioned | − PDF, on request, under embargo |
Vendor names referenced for category context. Flaks has no affiliation with the named platforms. If you run one of them and disagree with a row, we'd love to hear it — flaks@flaks.io.
Not seeing yours? Email hello@flaks.io and we'll write back personally.
They're built like enterprise software was sold in 2008 — tender, purchasing committee, on-premise install, custom integrations per partner. Flaks is built like Stripe or Linear: sign up online, integrate against a public API, pay only for the waybills you ship. Same problem space, opposite distribution model.
Configuration takes under an hour. Connecting your first forwarder and pushing a real test waybill end-to-end typically takes a working day. Replacing a fully-deployed legacy system is bigger — but it's measured in weeks, not the 12 to 18 months tender processes used to require.
Every cargo message your partners already send — air waybills, manifests, status updates, house bills — Flaks understands out of the box. Your forwarders don't have to change anything on their side; we speak the same standards they already use. New, modern partners can also use the open data standard if they want.
Yes. Every airline's data lives in its own walled garden, enforced at the deepest layer of the database — not in middleware where a bug could slip through. The system is structurally incapable of returning another airline's data on a query against yours.
Your data is yours. We provide a full export of every waybill, booking, message, rate card, and audit log in open formats. The API is public and documented, so you can run the export yourself any time, not just at the end of a contract.
Yes. The API is the contract. You can build a custom front-end, embed Flaks inside your existing intranet, or use the admin interface we ship. All three consume the same REST endpoints. You are never locked into our UI.
Per-waybill on the Growth tier — predictable, linear, and you only pay when you actually ship something. Enterprise is custom and typically a flat retainer for carriers handling significant volume. No seat licences, no per-partner fees, no surprise renewal hikes.
Both, natively. Marketplace API keys are a separate type from forwarder keys, so listing on cargo.one doesn't share the same surface area or blast radius as a direct DHL integration. You flip a switch, your inventory shows up on the marketplace within minutes.
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