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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2016
The quest to end lost airline luggage
Delta tests the future
of baggage handling
By SCOTT MAYEROWITZ
Associated Press
LINTHICUM, Md. — Victor DaRosa stands
under a scorching afternoon sun, loading bags
onto a jet heading to Detroit.
As each suitcase climbs up the conveyor belt
into the plane, a small computer veriies that it
actually belongs on that light. If one bag didn’t,
a red light would lash and the belt would stop
until somebody acknowledges the mistake and
reroutes the luggage.
This is the future of baggage handling. Delta
Air Lines is investing $50 million to soothe one
of air travel’s biggest headaches: lost and delayed
luggage.
Delta carried nearly 120 million checked suit-
cases last year, collecting $25 in fees, each way,
for most domestic bags. For that price, liers
expect their suitcase to be waiting on the carou-
sel when they arrive. Delta already has one of the
airline industry’s best luggage handling records
— just 1 out of every 500 bags failed to arrive on
time — but hopes that by deploying a RFID, or
radio-frequency identiication, tracking system
globally it can improve further.
If the system works, other airlines are likely to
follow. Ultimately the bag tag might be replaced
with permanent RFID readers in our suitcases,
reducing the chances liers in the future will start
a vacation missing their swimsuit.
“It’s a very smart move,” says Henry
Harteveldt, founder of travel consultancy Atmo-
sphere Research Group. “It’s one that will help
increase customer conidence that their bags will
arrive with them.”
RFID wirelessly identiies tags attached to
items. The technology is widely used at ware-
houses to track goods but Delta’s rollout is the
irst global use for passenger bags.
To better understand the technology, think
about your local supermarket. If every grocery
item had an RFID tag, cashiers wouldn’t have to
scan each product at checkout. Instead, the gro-
ceries would pass by a scanner and be instantly
registered. Shoppers could even leave everything
in their cart, having it all tallied at once.
The same principles apply to checked
luggage.
AP Photos/Patrick Semansky
Passengers prepare to check bags at a Delta Air Lines counter at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport in
Linthicum, Md., in July. Delta Air Lines is rolling out new technology to better track bags throughout its system.
The inside of a sample RFID-enabled Del-
ta Air Lines baggage tag, at top, at Balti-
more-Washington International Thurgood
Marshall Airport.
Barcodes on tags
Most airlines today use barcodes on tags to
identify each suitcase — each tag has its own
unique 10-digit number — and make sure it is
loaded onto the right plane. But reading each bar-
code with a handheld scanner is time consuming.
Often, a bag or two aren’t scanned or error mes-
sages are missed by workers focused on getting
planes out on time.
Delta designed its system to stop those errors.
At the airline’s 84 largest airports — account-
ing for 85 percent of its passengers — Delta will
have 1,500 special belt loaders with RFID read-
ers built in. Those loaders — like the one DaRosa
was using — stop when a bag for a different light
is accidentally placed on the belt.
“It’s amazing technology,” says DaRosa, a
ramp supervisor who has been testing the tech-
nology at Baltimore Washington International
Airport. “It’s going to totally eliminate a bunch
of careless little errors.”
Replacing handheld scanners allows ramp
workers to use both hands to lift bags, reducing
injuries and speeding up the loading and unload-
ing process. RFID also shortens the time needed
to ind and remove a bag from a plane at the last
second. All of that means more on-time lights.
Labyrinth of conveyor belts
Delta is also using RFID to track bags through
the labyrinth of conveyor belts below terminals.
If bags fall off a belt at a particular curve or get
suck at a junction, Delta will now have enough
RFID readers — about 5,200 globally — to
pinpoint the trouble spot and ix it. The Atlan-
Delta Air Lines employee Victor Da Rosa checks a baggage scanner before unloading
baggage from a flight.
ta-based airline says it plans to have the system
online in 344 airports by the end of August.
The new tags look like traditional ones. But
if held up to the light, passengers can see a in-
gernail-size chip and a credit card size antenna
inlaid inside.
By the end of this year, liers will be able to
track their bags through the Delta smartphone
app, getting push notiications at each step of the
journey. If a bag misses its light, passengers are
also notiied instantly.
That way passengers “aren’t standing at a
baggage carousel waiting for the last piece of lug-
gage to come off to realize their bag isn’t there,”
says Sandy Gordon, Delta’s vice president of air-
port operations for the eastern U.S.
Most passengers’ bags do arrive on time. But
there are so hiccups, with 1 out of every 500
bags Delta carried last year failing to do so. It’s
a record surpassed by only Virgin America and
JetBlue Airways, which both have smaller and
simpler route networks. Twice as many were
delayed last year on American Airlines, accord-
ing to statistics reported to the Department of
Transportation.
Bags often get delayed when bad weather
forces tight connections or passengers are
rerouted onto new lights.
Of the 245,000 bags Delta mishandled last
year, 208,000 of them arrived within three hours,
according to the airline. Another 25,000 were
reunited with passengers within 12 hours. The
remaining 12,000 were either lost or took more
than 12 hours to be delivered.
Installing RFID isn’t going to solve all of
Delta’s baggage problems. But the airline esti-
mates a 10-percent reduction in delayed bags.
That means about 25,000 fewer bags the airline
has to deliver to passengers’ homes, ofices or
hotel rooms.
For the past ive years, Australian airline Qan-
tas has offered a permanent RFID bag tag that li-
ers can purchase for about $23 and use when ly-
ing the airline domestically. Several big airports,
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including those in Las Vegas, Hong Kong, Milan
and Tokyo, use RFID to track bags through parts
of their systems.
But Delta, the world’s second largest carrier
by passenger trafic, is providing the most-com-
prehensive tracking the industry has seen to date.
Airlines have long found RFID too pricey but
the cost has dropped. McCarran International
Airport in Las Vegas says it currently pays 12
cents for each RFID tag, down from 21.5 cents
a decade ago. Traditional tags cost the airport 3
cents. Delta refused to say how much it’s pay-
ing for RFID bag tags, except that it is less than
10 cents each.
The new tracking system won’t follow every
suitcase.
There are limitations.
It includes bags checked at the gate and
claimed at a baggage carousel. But items like
strollers or bags checked at the gate for regional
jets — those picked up at the arriving gate — cur-
rently aren’t tracked with RFID.
If a Delta passenger connects onto a light
with a Delta partner like Air France, the tradi-
tional barcode tag takes over for the inal leg of
the journey. However, an Air France passenger
connecting to a Delta light gets a RFID sticker
added to the traditional tag when their luggage
irst enters Delta’s possession.
And nothing is preventing the airline from
losing your bag if any of these tags get ripped off
along the way.
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