Every two weeks a Fatal Error report is delivered to companies that have outstanding Fatal Errors on their account. If you’re unfamiliar with the report, congratulations! That could mean that your company either has never generated fatal errors or your company resolves them as soon as they are received. Two reasons why your manager should be happy to have you as their employee.

If you do receive the report, staff, including myself, is here to help you resolve your errors. One of the most common fatal errors that filers have issues with are Fatal Errors 072 and 073.

When a shipment is held in Customs for any grounds deemed reasonable by an Officer, a “flag” or indicator is input into the AES (Automated Export System). This indicator, reflected for a specific commodity or at the entire shipment level, will not allow you (or if an authorized agent is filing on your behalf) to edit or delete the shipment. In the AES, the status will show as “open” and at this point, any action made by the filer to the shipment will generate a Fatal Error. The two possible fatal errors are:

FATAL 072- SHIPMENT CANNOT BE CORRECTED

FATAL 073- SHIPMENT CANNOT BE CANCELLED

A CBP officer must manually remove the enforcement activity and “close the shipment” on the AES in order to allow for future edits or cancellations. To clear any shipments with these fatal errors, you must contact the Customs Officer at your port of export and request the shipment to be closed on the AES. Otherwise, subsequent errors will be generated.