Keeping pace

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Nick Gates, baggage portfolio director for SITA explains how baggage systems will cope with the increase in passengers.

How has the technology changed over the years?

On the baggage handling and processing side, the technology involved in moving the bag around hasn't evolved that quickly, but the way you check in baggage has changed. You used to walk up to a check-in agent and hand over your bag.

That's changing now to self service, mobile phone check-in and kiosks and there has been a separation of checking in and getting rid of your bag afterwards. You may also drop your bag off at a railway station or hotel.

At the other end of the chain when bags are being loaded onto aircraft there has been, over the last 10 years, the introduction of tracking and reconciliation systems which make sure the correct bag is put on the correct flight. New services can also tell passengers their bag has arrived.

Has this technology been put into practice?

There was a trial between London, Dubai and Hong Kong with Emirates where they put RFID tags on the bags and as they came off the arrival belts they were able to send SMS messages to passengers saying their bags had arrived. RFID has been talked about for years and it is happening. It's being installed in places and coming on in Amsterdam and Charles De Gaulle.

How will RFID improve baggage handling?

It should make it more reliable. Barcodes are great; they are cheap and reliable, but if you put through 100 bags you can only get 80 or 90 of them read, which isn't as good as RFID.

If you can't read the barcode on a bag it has to go through a sorting system to get it to the correct part of the airport. If the baggage tag cannot be read it then has to be manually processed, where someone tries to use a handheld reader to scan the barcode or key in a piece of information.

If you can't read 20% of your bags, with 10,000 going through every hour, that's 2000 an hour. You need several people doing this, which slows down the handling system.

How can this affect costs for operators?

It could mean the airport, as it expands, needs to spend more on a new baggage handling system all because it is not optimising the use of the system. By making sure you can more efficiently read the baggage tag, you should be able to optimise the system and that's how RFID can help.

Which airports have adopted innovative ideas?

Off-airport passenger and bag check-in is now a reality in many places around the world including Hong Kong, Switzerland and North America. In fact, the 2007 SITA/ACI/Airline Business Airport IT Trends Survey, showed that remote (off-airport) passenger check-in and bag drop has already been introduced by 11% of the respondent airports, while 40% intend to implement it within the next two to five years.

How much demand is there from regional airports to have the latest baggage handling systems installed?

There is lots of demand to have the best and latest systems. Dubai has been carrying out RFID work and has been involved in talks about introducing RFID. SITA itself isn't an RFID supplier but often we have to integrate our systems, so we have had discussions too. You will see more adoption of it in the Mid-East region.

I can't mention names at the moment but we have been talking with airports and vendors in that region. It's down to them to decide when they want to bring this in. The airport may be responsible for buying the infrastructure or getting the handling system upgraded, so they will have to spend money.

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