Radio Tags Can Find Stray Bags, but Can Airlines Afford Them?
By BARNABY J. FEDER
Published: March 7, 2005
For three days last Christmas week, Janet Suckling haunted the Delta Air Lines baggage area at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport waiting for the arrival of a bag in which her wedding dress and her husband-to-be's tuxedo had been packed....
***
For the last several years, the airlines have envisioned sharply reducing this infuriating problem with new radio frequency identification, or RFID, tags that identify and track items with a precision unmatched by today's bar code scanning systems.
Advocates of the new technology say that it is ready for use. But major airlines would each have to invest tens of millions of dollars to adopt RFID luggage tracking. Most are in such dire financial straits that that kind of money could be as hard to come by as legroom in coach....
***
The industry tracks its bag-handling performance by measuring bags lost per 1,000 customers. While that number was below five in 2004, that stills adds up to millions of bags going astray annually. Chasing down misdirected luggage and paying claims on lost bags can cost $100 to $200 a bag, according to industry estimates....
***
According to SITA, a technology consulting group for the airline industry that is based in Switzerland, the airlines could save $650 million annually from worldwide deployment of radio tags on luggage....
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/07/technology/07baggage.html