Chennai air cargo: INMAA4
INMAA4 is the Indian customs code for Chennai air cargo, also written Madras. The final character makes it an airport cargo terminal, where goods leave India by air.
The port code list records this location as CHENNAI AIR CARGO ACC, in its own words. That is the string a shipping bill and an eBRC filing will show you, so it is the one to recognise on a document even where the place is usually written another way.
Other names for Chennai air cargo
The same customs location is searched for and written about under more than one name. A document that uses one of these is not pointing at a different port, and INMAA4 is the code in every case.
- Madras
How to read the code
Indian port codes follow the UN/LOCODE shape: the two letter country code IN, then a three character location, then one character for the facility type. So INMAA4 splits as IN for India, MAA for the location, and 4 for the facility, which is why this one is an airport cargo terminal, where goods leave India by air.
The suffixes are: 1 sea port, 2 rail, 4 airport, 6 ICD or CFS, and B land customs station. That is why one city can appear several times: the sea terminal and the air cargo terminal are different customs locations and carry different codes.
What the UN/LOCODE register says about MAA
The three characters in the middle of INMAA4 are a UN/LOCODE location, and the register that assigns them keeps its own record of the place. It lists MAA as Chennai (ex Madras), in ISO 3166-2 subdivision TN, at 13°05′N, 80°17′E. The entry is approved by the national authority.
That record describes the location, not this terminal. Every code sharing MAA points at the same place and differs only in the facility suffix, so the register says the same thing about all of them. Where its name and the port code list’s own string differ, the list is the one your document will show: the register names the place, the list names the customs location you file against.
Other codes at MAA
The same location prefix carries one other code. If a document names a facility type different from the one you expected, it is usually one of these rather than a mistake.
Chennai has more than one customs location
The port code list places 3 codes at Chennai, a city also written Madras. Every Chennai port code puts them in one table, which is the quickest way to tell whether the code on your document is the one you meant.
Where this code is used
A port code identifies where a consignment was cleared, and it travels with the export: it is on the shipping bill, and it is one of the fields carried into an eBRC filing when the remittance is mapped to that shipping bill. Getting it wrong is one of the ways a filing that looks right is refused, in the same family as a wrong purpose code or currency code.
The code is also how the bill is looked up. ICEGATE’s public enquiry takes three inputs and the customs location is the first of them, so checking a bill’s status, LEO and EGM starts with the code on this page. If what you need is the document rather than where it has reached, downloading the copy from ICEGATE is a separate route.
If you are filing against a shipping bill for the first time, the step by step on the DGFT portal shows where these fields land, and the full guide covers what the certificate is doing with them. Shipping bills also carry their own obligation in the RBI ledger, which is what EDPMS closure is about.