Master AWB vs House AWB
Two documents, two liability regimes. Knowing which one governs your shipment matters most when something goes wrong, not when everything goes to plan.
Get a Rate1
MAWB per consolidated booking
Many
HAWBs can sit under it
2
Separate liability regimes
CIFFA STC
Governs the forwarder-shipper leg
Two contracts, not one document in two copies
Every consolidated air shipment runs on two layers of contract at once. The Master AWB (MAWB) is the contract between the freight forwarder and the airline — it covers the entire consolidated booking as one unit, references the carrier's actual flight, and is the document CBSA and the airline's own systems track the shipment against. The House AWB (HAWB) is a separate contract, issued by the forwarder to each individual shipper whose cargo is inside that consolidation — one MAWB can have anywhere from one to dozens of HAWBs sitting underneath it.
A shipper booking through UAL never sees the MAWB directly — their contract is the HAWB, and their relationship is with us, not with the operating carrier. That distinction matters more than it sounds: if a shipment is delayed, damaged, or lost, the shipper's legal recourse runs through the HAWB and the forwarder's own terms, not directly through the airline's conditions of carriage on the MAWB.
In practice this is invisible almost all the time — cargo moves, the MAWB gets scanned at each handling point, the HAWBs inside it travel together, and everyone's paperwork reconciles cleanly at destination. The distinction becomes very visible the moment a consolidation gets split.
Who's actually liable
Master AWB
Contract between UAL and the operating carrier. Liability is governed by the Montreal Convention (or Warsaw, on older routings) — an international treaty with fixed per-kilogram liability limits, regardless of declared value unless a supplementary declaration is filed.
House AWB
Contract between UAL and the shipper. Liability is governed by CIFFA's Standard Trading Conditions (or the forwarder's own terms) — a different regime, with its own limits and claim procedures, that can differ materially from the Montreal Convention limits on the underlying MAWB.
2 Regimes
the MAWB and HAWB are almost never governed by the same liability limits
Liability Gap
A forwarder's liability to you isn't automatically the same as the airline's liability to the forwarder
If your cargo is damaged in transit, your claim runs against the HAWB terms UAL issued to you — not directly against the airline's Montreal Convention limits on the MAWB.
This gap is exactly why declared value and cargo insurance matter on high-value shipments — the standard per-kilogram liability limits under either regime are rarely enough to cover the actual value of a damaged or lost high-value shipment (electronics, gems, pharmaceuticals). Ask your agent about supplementary declared value or third-party cargo insurance before shipping anything where the standard limits wouldn't make you whole.
Worked example
When a HAWB shipment gets separated from its MAWB
Picture a consolidated KUL-YYZ booking: one MAWB covering six shippers' HAWBs, tendered together at Kuala Lumpur. At the connecting hub, the aircraft is weight-restricted and the ground handler offloads two pieces to make the load — one of them is part of a single shipper's HAWB.
That offloaded piece doesn't get abandoned — it's re-tendered on the next available flight, usually within 24-48 hours, and travels under an amended manifest referencing the original MAWB number. But it does mean part of one HAWB's cargo now physically arrives on a different flight than the rest of the consolidation, and the forwarder has to reconcile which pieces arrived under which manifest before the shipment can be fully released to that shipper.
UAL's obligation here runs to the shipper under the HAWB — we notify the affected shipper directly, coordinate the re-tender, and update the CBSA release reference once all pieces have arrived. The airline's obligation runs to us under the MAWB — a short-shipped piece re-tendered within a reasonable window is standard handling, not a claims event, unless the delay causes a genuine loss (a missed connection, spoiled perishable cargo, a contractual delivery deadline).
This is also where the liability-regime distinction becomes concrete: if the delay does cause a loss, the shipper's claim is against UAL under the HAWB terms, and separately, UAL's own recourse (if any) against the carrier runs under the MAWB's Montreal Convention terms — two different claims, two different documents, potentially two different outcomes.
What UAL handles for you
We hold the MAWB relationship with the operating carrier and issue your HAWB directly — so if a consolidation gets split in transit, you have one point of contact (us) instead of having to chase a carrier who doesn't know you exist as an individual shipper.
Frequently asked questions
Against UAL, under the terms of the House AWB we issued you. We in turn may have recourse against the carrier under the Master AWB, but that's a separate contract you're not a party to — your claim runs through us, under CIFFA Standard Trading Conditions or our own terms, not directly against the airline's Montreal Convention limits.
Related
What is an Air Waybill?
Read more →
Air Freight Documentation Checklist
Read more →
Freight Consolidation & Groupage Explained
Read more →
Liability frameworks: Montreal Convention 1999; CIFFA Standard Trading Conditions. Last verified: July 2026.
Air Freight Fundamentals
Get a Rate