SITA’s latest technology – BagJourney – aims to eliminate one of the worst things that can happen in the end-to-end passenger experience: lost bags. With theBagJourney system, SITA says it can make accurate information on the location of passengers’ baggage available to airlines and airports, using the 2.5 billion data messages it manages for the global airline and airport community through its BagMessage service. BagJourney is integrated with WorldTracer, a global tracing and matching service of delayed bags, and this integration allows a bag’s journey to continue to be tracked, even if it is mishandled.
Speaking at Passenger Terminal Expo in Paris, Nick Gates, SITA’s portfolio director for baggage said: “An immense amount of data is created about baggage and we have worked hard to design solutions to use these billions of messages and provide value to the air transport community.
“BagJourney follows the bag, from check-in to final delivery, through multiple airports and multiple airlines. We have now made it possible to track airline baggage just like a parcel. We are delivering this service to our community via an application programming interface (API) to allow airlines and airports to integrate it into to their existing systems quickly and easily, including services such as mobile updates which they might offer to passengers.”
Keeping track of passengers’ bags is a priority for the air transport industry but it will become even more important in the coming years, as airlines and airports prepare to implement IATA’s new resolution 753. This resolution, which comes into effect in 2018, requires IATA member airlines to monitor and log the status of its passengers’ bags through the major stages of the bags’ journey. One of the biggest consequences will be that inbound (arrival bags) will need to be more actively tracked/monitored.
Andrew Price, head of airport operations management at IATA, added, “What is clear is that, if airlines can use baggage data efficiently they will see results. When one major airline introduced 100% tracking they saw a 35% reduction in mishandling, so there will be a combination of savings and improvements in the passenger experience.”
Posted March 11, 2015