Unscheduled or unanticipated Air AMS downtime is rare and is generally for a short duration.  However, in the event that the CBP system is unexpectedly down, CBP will grant “credit” to the Air AMS participant for the amount of time the system is down.  An Air AMS participant must contact CBP if expected freight status notifications are not received for a period of 2 hours.  During this time, the Air AMS participant should troubleshoot its own operations or that of its service provider/software vendor to ensure that its own systems are working properly.

To determine if Air AMS is experiencing an unscheduled downtime, the Air AMS participant may contact the CBP help desk at 800-927-8729, which is a 24 hours a day, 7 days a week operation.  The CBP help desk will verify if Air AMS is experiencing downtime, record the time of the Air AMS participant’s call, and, if available, give an expected time when Air AMS will be operational.