Baggage Handling By Airlines

One of the major problem faced by the airlines is how to handle the baggage of the fliers ? lost baggage, delayed baggage arrival and other baggage related issues are quite mundane with airlines.Airlines try to compete with each other in terms of better in flight services, pretty air hostesses, timely arrival and departures but baggage handling is one area which is often neglected.
It is estimated that annually $760 millions are spend by the airlines on this problem of lost or misplaced baggages on addition to it is the cost related to increased safety measures due to increased instances of terror threats.Unaccompanied baggage is not allowed to be loaded in passenger flights and reconciliation of tags with the passengers who have already boarded the flight is a cumbersome process.

Airline baggages is fixed with large stick -on bar code tag at the time of luggage check in.The luggage then move on various conveyors which have bar code readers mounted on them to scan each baggage that come in its effective range. The problem with this system are that bar-code reader require clear lie of sight , in case the tag is misaligned, it cannot be read. labels are often unreadable due bunching of baggages owing to improper loading by the staff deployed.Tags may be worn out or dirty enough to make it impossible for bar code reader to read them.
The baggage is then Routed to correct bay where a baggage carrying trucks ensure pickup and delivery to the right aircraft. As the baggage is loaded in the hold of the aircraft they are once again scanned by the bar code scanner to scan each piece of baggage and information is relayed to central computer that which bags have made it to aircrafts hold.
During this time passenger begin boarding the aircraft,their boarding passes are swiped and this data is fed automatically into the computer system. Now this data is available as passenger manifest, which tells the airline staff which of the checked in passenger actually boarded the aircraft.This is tallied with passengers baggage and one to many relationship is established between passenger and pieces of baggage.All this process ensure that unaccompanied baggage should not be travelling in the aircraft.

 In case it is found that unaccompanied bag is being loaded into the hold, that bag is unloaded from the hold which is quite complicated as the baggage attended has to enter the hold and search for that bag amongst the clutter of bags with only hand held bar code scanner at his disposal.It also poses other problem such as whether this bag was supposed to be loaded in some other aircraft but due to improper reading was loaded in tis aircraft.This entails manual intervention on part of airline and coordinating with various people to reunite the passenger with his bag.In case of transit passenger the situation worsens as bags and passenger moves from one terminal to the next.

Instead of ordinary bar code stick-on labels , RFID inlay stick-on labels can be used.These have printed portions as well as RFID tag inlay which be either a read only or write once read many type.These tags can be read by RFID readers mounted at various locations on conveyor belts.

The advantages of such system are :

• Many bags can be read at a time unlike bar code scanners. This speeds up baggage handling process.
• RFID readers can read tags even if they are misaligned or dirty.
• Retrieving bag from hold is easy as hand held reader need not to be in line of sight and it can read multiple bag tags simultaneously.

This technology is presently being used in major airports of the world which have lot of traffic due to transit passengers for example Hong Kong airport.

Emirates Airline Employee with RFID Tag on Bag 

Future Scenario:

• IATA may make it compulsory for all airlines as well airports to install RFID reader systems and tags.
• Government and security agencies would also promote the initiative for enhance security of the airports and flights.
• Newer or airports undergoing up gradation to newer control and automation system may provide facilities for both bar code reader as well RFID for baggage handling to ensure maximum passenger friendly environment.