N830MH

Can't you believe this? He went to Miami Airport for 4 times and he was accused to stealing luggage at MIA for 4 times. He has been arrested with his charges grand theft, and resisting arrest an officer without violence.

http://www.local10.com/news/man-accu...rport/36120998

Also, he gave out his identify, but he gave his false name to the officer.

This must stop! No one touch the bags. Keep the bad guys off the airport property.

Loren Pechtel

How do you propose they keep him out? There's no ID check at the door!

Section 107

No, but many airports have implemented facial recognition systems and they can ID as they enter the property. Usually the systems are focused on terminals rather than the baggage claim areas.

Boggie Dog

A fix would be to use dual rfid tags, one for the bag, one for the claim check. If a checked bag was taken past a certain point without the matching claim check an alarm would sound.

Loren Pechtel

It would fail because too many of the claim checks would be placed where they failed to scan.

Boggie Dog

Pass through portals. A short adoption period would be needed.

Loren Pechtel

You would have to have people take their tags out for scanning. Normally claim checks will be stacked on top of each other if you have more than one. Oops--at best one will read, likely none will. Also, without a stiff backing you'll have reliability problems--you can't produce the luggage tag and the claim tag off the same printer.

If anything is going to be done I think it would be better using barcodes and a human reader rather than RFID.

fotographer

Indian airports have solved the bag issue, no one is allowed in the airports that is not a passenger. You just wait outside until the passenger exits the airport.

Section 107

Hypothetically and theoretically, it is a possible fix. But along with what Loren points out there are many other reasons why this is not a practical solution, not least of which is return on investment in most western airports (theft of bags or items other than by TSA is very low) and that alarms would be sounding more often than car alarms on a Friday night in Bed Stuy such that they would be completely ignored after the 2nd day.

Loren Pechtel

It could be done with humans doing an exit check--if you have a bag that's not carry-on legal with you you need to produce a matching claim check for it, or else produce an ID with the name used to check it in. So long as the airlines aren't meaningfully accountable for theft it's not going to happen, though.

ioto1902

I may have missed something here, but, carrousels should be accessible only to the passengers. MIA is a major airport.
Nothing to reinvent here.

Section 107

Granted I have been to only a very small number of all the airports in the US but I don't recall any baggage claim areas that were not accessible to the public.

MEX on the other hand, does restrict access to the baggage claim areas to only pax and do check claim tags to bag tags.

While uncommon such thefts do happen with some frequency: a little over a year ago someone stole a congress-critter's bag from baggage claim at DCA. The airport cops were able to review surveillance video and: identify the theft from the baggage carrousel, track the perp's movements with the stolen bag out to a taxi, identify the taxi, and subsequently track the perp to his hotel where the perp was still going through the bag spread open on a bed when the officers opened the hotel room door.

Philipp5

LOL, it's because Miami is in the Third World

Boggie Dog

That's how it was done at some airports years ago. Had to produce claim check and luggage to be checked by a moniter. I suspect that went away with lowered staffing levels at airports.

Enigma368

I always find it bizzarre that baggage claims are open to non passengers in pretty much all US airports. Cannot think of any other country in the world that has this.