Baggage Blues at Airport

Some of us would have had the chance of being at the receiving end due to the lack of coordination by the Baggage handling department at Airports.  While we would have boarded the destined airplane, our baggage would have trailed behind, or were loaded onto another airplane. The situation puts us in a fix, especially if we have a corporate meeting or family functions to attend, immediately after our landing.

Ever imagined where the folly lies? The problem and solution lies within the domain of Baggage handling department.  That said, it must be noted that the for effective Baggage handling, two things are important; One the coordination between different ground handling staff, second an effective  baggage handling system or software.  While the efficiency (or lack of it) of the staff is easy to identify and fix, what challenges is the legacy system implemented at some of these Airports.

A baggage-handling system has three main jobs- (1) Move bags from the check-in area to the departure gate, (2) Move bags from one gate to another during transfers, (3) Move bags from the arrival gate to the baggage-claim area.

The measure of the efficiency of a baggage-handling system is simple: Can the bags move from point to point as fast as the travelers can? If the bags move slower, you'll have frustrated travelers waiting for bags, or bags failing to make connecting flights on time. If the bags move too fast, you might have bags making connecting flights that passengers miss.

Each airport has its own requirements. For instance, the time allotted for a bag to make it from the check-in area to the gate is determined by how fast a passenger can make the same trip. In some airports, it might only be a short walk to the passenger terminal, while in others; passengers might have to take a train.

To eliminate the scope of any baggage related issues, the system in question should incorporate functionalities that help to move bags from the check-in counter to the departure gate in an almost completely automated way. It should have Destination-coded vehicles (DCVs), unmanned carts propelled by linear induction motors mounted to the tracks, can load and unload bags without stopping and automatic scanners scan the labels on the luggage. It should also have conveyors equipped with junctions and sorting machines automatically route the bags to the gate.

Again, all these information needs to get into the baggage handling software used in the Airports. Some of the leading software used in this segment are Amadeus Altea, Sabre and Galileo. While these software do a commendable job in tracking the baggage, they need to scale up to meet new challenges  in Airport IT management.