Rfid
 

I am wondering if ac has any plans to implement RFID (radio frequency identification) for better tracking of luggages, i've read and heard a lot about it and it really sounds great for airlines however costs might be high i am assuming, any toughts?

All bags thru HKIA have it (all carriers). It's a great system, but cost .10 cents a bag. Something tells me AC will try to keep their dimes and not implement it at home.

The cost to AC/Jazz is 500 dimes every time they need to send a taxi to deliver Mrs. acysb87s luggage.(not including time by staff ...) ;)

It's been looked at. Some people who are in a position to know told me that until standards are worked out and cost per unit comes down, it's a pipe dream.

It has the potential to revolutonize the industry if it widely adopted, though.

Coming soon to an airline near you:

Each bag you check in will get a unique one-time use RFID tag. To recover the cost of the tags and readers, you will be charged $10 for each bag you check.

It will be like some cities that require you to buy stickers for garbage bags you put out.

The bag sorting system in YYZ and other major Canadian airports belong to the airport authority.

HKIA is the airport authority too. The make all airlines using the airport use RFID.

And the Hong Kong government paid all the costs associated with building the new HKG, something no North American government does any more. Airports here have many more costs to capitalize and cover with bond issues and AIFs. And as you know, the major cities in Asia are all far more advanced in their use of such technologies than are North American cities. There isn't a North American transit system that uses anything close to an Octypus card.

Also there are major privacy issues being raised about the use of these tags particularly since Walmart announced it was considering using them for inventory control. Such matters don't concern people in many parts of the world, but in North America and Europe this will be a major barrier to overcome before such systems can be implemented.

Lots of things are possible technologically that are not socially amenible. I know this frustrates techno-freaks, but that's reality on this side of the ocean.

Finally, HKG can well afford to insist airlines use these things because the vast majority of flights are longhaul and thus still profitable for airlines to operate, even if it costs another 10-cents a checked bag for the tag. The economics of domestic and transborder flights in NAmerica and Europe don't have the luxury of margins being further eroded.

Thus far, the cost of tracing and returning "lost" bags is much less than tagging every bag flown with such tags, and installing the infrastructure required to track them.

In theory, the bar code system should be just as effective a tracing system, as long as the tag is scanned at both ends of the trip. However, there are many spots where the system can break down, and bags left sitting around an airport or put on the wrong plane. While the RF tags might detect these bags much more quickly, you'd have to have the system installed world-wide to be effective.

The current system should work if every bag checked and scanned into the system was also scanned as it was boarded onto the airplane, then the two lists reconciled before take off. In theory this reconcilliation is supposed to occur, but if it does, how do bags get left off, or end up on the wrong flight (unless they've been mistagged in the first place)?