Next Flight Out (NFO)

Move time-critical cargo on the soonest available commercial flight.

NFO (next flight out) is a time-critical shipment shape: a ground courier picks up the cargo, drops it at the airline as soon as possible, and a second ground courier recovers it at the destination and runs final delivery. chrt builds NFO from the same multi-leg flow as any other air shipment — what makes it NFO is the time-window search you run on the Flights tab.

Before you start

  • Connect a courier in the origin market (for the tender ground leg) and a courier in the destination market (for the recover and deliver ground leg). NFO doesn’t work end-to-end without both.
  • Be ready to commit fast. NFO orders typically need to be submitted within the same hour you start the draft so the soonest flight is still catchable.

If you do NFO regularly between the same airports, save the draft as a template by building it once with placeholder details, then duplicate it whenever a new NFO request comes in.

1. Start a multi-leg draft

Open chrt.com/orders/drafts/new and complete Order setup with the shipper, then add the cargo on the Cargo tab. NFO often has small, urgent freight (documents, organs, parts) — get dimensions and weight in for proper handling and pricing.

2. Add three segments

On the Segments tab, add — in order:

  1. Ground Segment — the origin courier who picks up and tenders to the airline.
  2. Flight Segment — the air leg.
  3. Ground Segment — the destination courier who recovers from the airline and runs final delivery.

Assign your origin courier to the first ground segment and your destination courier to the third. The flight segment doesn’t take a courier — chrt tracks it through its FlightAware integration.

3. Search for the soonest flight

Open the Flights tab. The card for your flight segment shows a flight search form.

  1. Pick the origin and destination airports.
  2. In the Show flights: dropdown, pick Next 6 hr. This is the NFO default — only flights departing in the next six hours appear. Use Next 12 hr or Next 24 hr if the cargo can wait longer.
  3. Leave Include connections off for a direct-only NFO; toggle it on if a routing with a connection gets there sooner.
  4. Click Search Flights.

chrt returns each candidate flight with airline, flight number, scheduled out and in times, and the gate/terminal info FlightAware provides.

4. Pick the flight and save

Click the flight card you want. The selection populates flight number, airline, origin/destination airports, scheduled departure, and scheduled arrival into the flight segment.

Click Save Flight 1. chrt creates the 7 milestone tasks for this flight (airline accepted cargo, tendered, departed, in flight, arrived, recovered, and any handling milestones) and writes the flight info onto the segment.

The card flips to a Configured badge with a confirmation reading “Flight tasks created — Flight {N} ({ORIG} → {DEST}) has been assigned to this segment.”

5. Add stops and submit

Open the Stops tab. The ground pickup, tender, recover, and final delivery stops are pre-created. For each:

  1. Set the address and point of contact.
  2. Select which cargo applies — the pickup stop picks up all NFO cargo, tender drops it at the airline, recover picks it up from the airline, and final delivery drops it at the consignee.
  3. Set the time window tight on the tender stop so the origin courier knows the airline cutoff.
  4. Add task artifacts — air waybill, tender receipt, signature on final delivery.

Open Preview, click Validate, fix anything flagged, and Submit.

How to know it worked

  • The order page shows three task groups in sequence with the flight segment in the middle.
  • The flight card on the order page shows live status (scheduled, departed, in flight, arrived) once the airline updates FlightAware.
  • The origin courier sees the pickup and tender tasks; the destination courier sees the recover and deliver tasks. Neither sees the other half of the order.

If something looks different

  • No flights in the search window. Widen the search to Next 12 hr or Next 24 hr, or toggle Include connections on. Some airport pairs have only a few daily departures.
  • The right flight is past departure. FlightAware can return imminent departures, but the airline cutoff is usually 60–90 minutes before scheduled-out. Pick the next one.
  • No courier in the destination market. Connect one before submitting — NFO orders can be submitted without a destination courier, but they’ll stall at the recover step. See Managing your courier network for finding partners.
  • Contact hi@chrt.com if a flight search returns nothing for an airport pair you know flies.