The Journey Of A Thousand Miles Ends Well With Millions of Bags Properly Tracked

SITA has introduced its new BagJourney system at Passenger Terminal EXPO in Paris, which will give airlines and airports access to accurate information on the location of passengers’ bags. Harnessing 2.5 billion data messages gathered from 500 airlines and 250 airports around the world through its BagMessage service, SITA makes it possible to track luggage just like packages.

The industry has a big job to accomplish by 2018. That’s the year IATA’s new resolution 753 goes into effect, requiring IATA member airlines to actively monitor and record the status of passengers’ bags through key checkpoints in the journey.

“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,” said Nick Gates, SITA portfolio director, Baggage, speaking at the Passenger Terminal Expo, Paris.

“SITA BagJourney follows the bag, from check-in to final delivery, through multiple airports and multiple airlines. We at SITA 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 their existing systems quickly and easily, including services such as mobile updates which they might offer to passengers.”

“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.” -Nick Gates, SITA

Andrew Price, head of Airport Operations Management, IATA said: “If airlines can use baggage data efficiently they will see results. When one major airline introduced 100 percent tracking they saw a 35 percent reduction in mishandling, so there will be a combination of savings and improvements in the passenger experience.”

BagJourney is uniquely integrated with IATA’s World Tracer® program which quickly matches found bags with lost bag reports.