Baggage-Tagging Projects Gaining Altitude

Early this year, the Hong Kong airport reported that 50 airlines using the facility apply RFID baggage tags to a total of 40,000 bags—90 percent of all bags departing from the airport—each day. Turner says the number of airlines using the RFID labels has jumped to 65, though he declines to provide an updated number of bags handled. Still, this means George Schmitt will need to supply more than 1.2 million tags monthly.

McCarran Airport, Allen says, has been using RFID for baggage tracking for five years (see Las Vegas Airport Bets on RFID) and is now ready to begin transitioning from the RFID baggage tags it currently employs—which contain EPC Gen 1 Class 0 UHF passive inlays, made only by Motorola—to labels containing standardized EPC Gen 2 Class 1 inlays. She notes that the airport will soon begin testing Gen 2 RFID labels, and hopes to select a vendor of baggage labels with EPC Gen 2 inlays by August 2009.

Currently, McCarran places RFID-enabled labels on 70,000 bags each day. The airport spends a little over 21 cents per label, a cost justified by the high cost of locating lost bags—$150 per bag.

SITA, a provider of integrated IT business and communication services for the air-transport industry, issued a report this week indicating that the industry lost $3.8 billion in 2007 due to growing pressures on baggage management linked to passenger volumes, tight aircraft turnaround times and heightened security measures. Figures from WorldTracer, SITA's automated system for tracing lost and mishandled passenger baggage used by 400 airlines and ground handling companies, show 42.4 million bags to have mishandled or delayed last year.

The air transport industry handles 2.25 billion pieces of checked baggage every year. According to Giovanni Bisignani, IATA's director general and CEO, RFID could save the industry as much as $700 million annually if the technology were fully implemented across the industry.