Year-on-year improvement in baggage delivery rates has been consistent for more than a decade now, with mishandling rates decreasing by 70% since 2007. SITA’s fourteenth annual report marks 2018 as a defining period for the global air transport industry, as airlines increasingly adopt baggage tracking technologies - and as IATA’s Resolution 753 comes into effect in June.
Barbara Dalibard, CEO, SITA, said: “Over the last decade, we have seen significant improvements in bag management as airlines have taken advantage of technology. Now with IATA’s drive for 100% bag tracking, technology adoption will rise further. End-to-end tracking produces data which reveals where improvements can be made in operational processes. While we won’t see a sudden change in 2018, it is a real turning point for the industry as airlines begin to unlock the value of the tracking data for the 4.65 billion bags they carry.”
With the rise to more than 4bn passengers in 2017, considerable pressure was put on the industry’s baggage systems and airlines did well to reduce the rate of mishandled bags. At a loss rate of 5.57 bags per thousand passengers, last year’s was the lowest level ever recorded. Mishandled bags nonetheless cost the industry an around US$2.3bn in 2017, so there is plenty of room for improvement with the adoption of end-to-end bag tracking.
SITA’s Baggage Report includes examples of how airlines, including Aeroflot, Alitalia, Bahamasair, Delta and Qatar, are using innovative and proven technologies to improve bag management and tracking. One case study outlines how the airline Bahamasair went from scanning bag tag labels on a “bingo” card to full Resolution 753 tracking in Miami and Nassau airports within seven days, including the capability to share tracking data in real-time via SITA’s BagJourney service.
SITA BagJourney is the first community-based baggage tracking system that provides an end-to-end view of the baggage journey using data from multiple sources.
To read the full report, click here.
