Land Of Lost Luggage

Media information : 20 June 2008

Land Of Lost Luggage

Landed in Sydney but your bags are holidaying in Bangkok? You're not on your own; the latest figures say over 42 million pieces of baggage went astray in 2007 and to add insult to injury, it is now taking15% longer to return the bags compared to 2005.

SITA, the IT provider which tracks passenger baggage worldwide for the air transport industry, released results from its WorldTracer system for tracing lost and mishandled passenger baggage used by 400 airlines and ground handling companies, showing 42.4 million bags were mishandled or delayed in 2007.

In total the air transport industry handles around 2.25 billion pieces of checked baggage every year.

Patrick Teo, CEO of New Zealand-based BCS Group, dominant in the airports and logistics sector with worldwide sales of its baggage and freight tracking and handling systems, says there is an industry-wide push to improvement both from a cost perspective to airports and to passenger satisfaction.

"At BCS we are working on fine-tuning a fully integrated RFID based baggage management system that can track, trace and route passenger baggage from check in through to destination. We also have developed smart technology that provides an alert if baggage is tampered with during handling."

Mr Teo says BCS 'Virtual Airport' software is helping airport management make more informed decisions as to peak flows and associated staffing, before issues occur.

"We are seeing more pressures being put on airports in terms of security as well as bigger passenger volumes and faster turnarounds due to the new wide bodied aircraft such as the A380 and that can have a flow-on effect on baggage handling accuracy."

BCS is now the largest company of its kind in New Zealand and employs around 250 staff globally including operations in Australia and North America with strong interest coming from the Middle East India and Asia.

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