Over one million bags go missing every year. Although most of them are re-located and re-united with their owners at some stage or the other enough of them disappear, victims of pilferage, theft or sheer indifference to where they have fetched up. For years now, efforts to keep passenger and baggage on the same track and ensure that they leave together at the point of disembarkation has been a dream and a nightmare.
There is nothing quite as dismaying as watching the carousel at an airport go round and round with no bag coming. Ask any passenger and you will be told that there is a sense of unease until the bag is spotted and retrieved. For many, that does not happen and they are compelled to fill in forms and undergo severe hardship and inconvenience. Ask any baggage-handling agency at a modern nightmare and they will share with you the intrinsic logistics of getting bags onto the right aircraft and how easy it is to get it wrong. Ask any airline and they will tell you their efficiency graph and their bottom line would flourish if passengers did not travel with luggage. The industry would thrive if check-in baggage were taken out of the equation.
Since that is not likely to happen what does a passenger do when he discovers that the blue suitcase could be anywhere from Caracas to California? He makes a complaint. That is his pathetic defense and offense. Now, any self-respecting airline will swiftly tell you that they have much comfort to offer and it covers clothes, amenities and even hotel accommodation. It is much of a fabrication really since airlines generally do diddly squat for passengers who have lost their luggage. The fact is that lost luggage passengers are a nuisance and demand a lot of backtrack paperwork. The pleasant idea of being cosseted with love and clean up kits is good for the ads but there are enough escape clauses to deny stranded passengers these courtesies and the confrontation usually ends up in a shouting match. It isn’t adequate at all even when the rare carrier concedes the courtesy. An ill-fitting pajama and a tube of toothpaste are poor compensation and this set-up is vividly indicative of how there still exists a primitive side to air travel. The average financial compensation for losing 20 kilos of luggage in the interim is rough $10 at the end of a flurry of signatures. Consequently, the best odds for any improvement lie with technology. It is the only way to score plus points.
It has been noticed that one of the best ways of ensuring minimum loss is to create slots for bags rather like eggs in a crate. This “tub each” concept has been found to be quite successful. This standardizes the size and shape of the items and allows sortation of the baggage to be undertaken on a modified tilt-tray sorter capable of handling the tubs. The identical shape of the tubs make it also possible to create automatic early bag storage (EBS) system. Bags belonging to passengers with long transfers and those that check-in early can be stored until their destination bins in the system are available. Then they are automatically fed into the min river as their time is called. A stacker crane picks up the tubs and distributes them to several lanes, each with their own specific time slot. And on it goes. To make it even more efficient advanced technology is being introduced. Under this approach the system transports bags on computerized vehicles rather than conveyors. The tubs are loaded with individual pieces of baggage as at Paris CDG, but they are moved on cart and travel through the system covering distances through high speeds. Storage and retrieval are done automatically.
The difference between a good airport and an adequate one in passenger terms is frequently decided by its efficiency in handling baggage and delivering it on arrival. Airports may have several other fancy attractions but delay in baggage delivery can negate all the other positive elements.
Airport managements are now making luggage efficiency a very high priority but it is not easy. The advent of the transit age and the movement of traffic through alliances have put the baggage movement sector under a severe challenge. Passengers flying through three and even four stops, expect their bags at the end. There is enough evidence to indicate that loyalty to an airport or an airline can be shattered by a single bad experience. The reason why airlines frequently wish to intercede or ride herd on airport authorities is that in the vast majority of cases passengers blame the carrier and not the airport for mishandling.
