Sydney Airport to Instate RFID Baggage Tags

AcidAUS writes "Australia's Sydney Airport is investigating high-tech tagging methods for baggage handling, which could greatly reduce the number of bags that go missing each year. Industry experts say that baggage mishandling costs the industry globally $US1.7 billion each year, and that much of this cost is due to failures in the barcode-based tagging system."

Unfortunatly

[El Lobo]

Unfortunatly, better tagging is not a guarantee that things will go better with baggage. Growing passenger numbers and improved security procedures are the main factors fuelling estimated annual losses of one billion US dollars for the world's airlines in missing and mishandled baggage.
In almost all cases, baggage IS correcty tagged, but it's as always the human factor which fails to function correctly. Because all security restrictions, the baggage is now in many cases manually examined and the volume of the baggage traffic and personal stress are still the main causes for missing or damaged baggage.

Re:So that 1.7 billion figure...

[schnooka_boy]

One time I flew with EasyJet from Copenhagen to London. The devices that moved the luggage weren't working, so instead of waiting for them to work they decided to just put us all on the airplane, fly it in into the sky, and THEN tell us our luggage was left in Copenhagen. Thankfully it was the end of my trip, so no big loss. Not so thankful for a group of 4 girls who were just starting their 3 month vacation around Europe and everything they took with them was now gone. They had no place to have the airline send their luggage to either. Goooood times. Unfortunately, I don't think RFID will resolve general douchebaggery.

Throwing meney at the problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks to me like they have not investigated properly what is causing the problem. Only if missing or unreadable bar codes are the cause this can be of any help, and even then it surely is not the only solution. My guess is that they are simply throwing technology (and thus money) to the problem. This is OK if you're sure it will work, but in this case I think the chances of making it worse (read, more money lost) are big.

On the other hand, what I would like to see is a system that allows *me* to track my baggage, and thus knowing that it's in Chicago instead of Barcelona, and not having to wait for hours just in case it shows up somewhere.

Re:riiiiiight....

[ayjay29]

>>It actually sounds alright to me. I'll don my tinfoil hat when they attach it to passengers, but this looks like one place where RFID can be put to good use.

I agree. With RFID you can route bags to the correct plane, or baggage claim automaticaly. You can flash lights and soundbuzzers if the wrong bag goes the whong way. You can also find the location of bags easily, as the readers cost a couple of hundrad bucks, there's no reason to monitor baggage flow at numerous locations.

As for your tinfoil hat, does it have a pocket [wikipedia.org] about six inches by four?.

Re:KLM already does at Amsterdam (Schiphol)

[Bob54321]

They need to do something at that airport. I have been there several times on a variety of airlines and only once got my baggage on the day I arrived. The lines of people wanting to make a claim are always enormous.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Couriers

[darkitecture]

How about using RFID tags on fucking FedEx, UPS and DHL deliveries? The current system is so illogical and antiquated, it's ludicrous. God knows how many times I've checked in on an item only to find the page hasn't been updated for four days. Sure, sometimes it works (I had updates about three times a day when tracking an item from Manhattan to Osaka using FedEx, that was nice) but most of the time it fails horribly and you come to know the tracking number as merely a "Reference Number For When The Package Goes Missing Or Gets Delayed"...

Not really a new tech

[giuntag]

Airports have been experimenting with this since at least 2001, and many are using it in production.

Contrary to what some posters assumed, rfid DOES in fact help quite a bit the baggage handling system:

- rfid reader can read tags which sit on the bottom / opposite end of the suitcase, while barcode readers cannot do it. The overall positive-read ratio is much increased. The tags are smaller and less prone to tear-off/smearing of the barcode print

- rfid card readers can read many tags at a time, hence the conveyor line can be sped up a lot (as in: put all baggages on the truck to the runaway, and the rfid reader is put on top of the gate below which the truck passes)

- if the complete baggage info, such as final destination, status of x-ray-check, etc is stored on the tag (there are quite a few bytes in there), any tag reader can decode it and sort the baggage even in the absence of network connection , ie . without interrogating a central db. Smaller devices, not even wifi-connected, can be used to recover info from baggages that are found stray in any airside area (and a working 802.11 inside a bhs system or covering a complete runaway is radio nightmare,trust me).
Downside: if that info is not crypted, it could be eavesdropped...

Of course, the point is still valid that all the new anti-terrorism measures are quite a nightmare for airports and airline handlers, and have a great impact on operative efficiency.

Will they actually use it?

[Urban Garlic]

I got a lesson about the baggage bar-code system a few years ago. I was flying from Calgary to Washington DC via Toronto -- you have to retrieve your bags in Toronto so you can clear US customs in Canada, plus there's extra security for Washington-bound flights (special secure gate, mandatory hand-search of carryons, baggage matching), so if the bags don't show, you miss your connection.

Well, my bag didn't show. I asked the clerks to check the computer and find out where it was, and they said they couldn't. I eventually pressed them as to why, suggesting that the bar codes might be useful, and they said the bar codes were not actually ever scanned. Now, that may have been true, or they may have been trying to get rid of a pestering customer, but it was clear in any case that the computer did not know where my bag was. They could not even confirm that it had been loaded on the flight out of Calgary. They had no idea at all.

As it turned out, it had been mistakenly directed to the domestic arrivals carousel instead of the US connections carousel, and I was able to retrieve it and go on my way.

I would love it if some kind of actually-useful, actually-used baggage tracking system were implemented.