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SITA: Tracking airline passenger bags drives 66% improvement in baggage delivery

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Airlines that are adding tracking at more points of the baggage journey are enjoying a huge improvement in bag delivery globally. The SITA 2019 Baggage IT Insights – officially launched at an event in Abu Dhabi International Airport today – shows that where tracking is done at check-in and loading onto the aircraft, the rate of improvement is as high as 66%.

These results come as the record drop in the baggage mishandling rate achieved globally over the past decade plateaus, with the rate steady at around 5.7 bags per thousand passengers over the past three years. In 2018, the rate was 5.69 per thousand passengers.

Over the past year, an increasing number of airlines and airports have started to introduce tracking at key points in the journey – check-in, loading onto the aircraft, transfers and arrival – to improve baggage management and further reduce the chances of a bag being mishandled. SITA’s research provides the first glimpse of the success of this tracking. It reveals that where bags were being tracked when loaded onto the aircraft, the rate of improvement ranged between 38% and 66% depending on the level of tracking introduced.

Peter Drummond, Director of Baggage at SITA, said: “While the mishandling rate has started to plateau over the past few years, this comes against a continued growth in passenger numbers and their bags. In 2018, 4.36 billion travelers checked in more than 4.27 billion bags. More bags makes things more challenging. Everyone across the industry needs to look beyond the process and technology improvements made in the past decade and adopt the latest technology such as tracking to make the next big cut in the rate of mishandled bags.”

Ahmed Juma Al Shamsi, Acting Chief Operations Officer at Abu Dhabi Airports, said: “For our passengers the timely delivery of baggage is key to ensuring a seamless passenger experience and therefore an area in which we continue to make further improvements. Looking forward, baggage tracking is fundamental to driving more accurate bag delivery not only at Abu Dhabi International Airport but across the entire passenger journey. We have led the way with the introduction of tracking on arrival and we have already seen significant improvements.”

Transferring baggage from one aircraft, or airline, to another remains a pinch point in the journey and in 2018 it was again the main reason for bags being mishandled. Transfer bags accounted for 46% of all mishandled bags.
Drummond added: “Transfer is by far the most difficult stage to track a bag as there are multiple airlines and airports involved. However, data from this year’s report shows that tracking at key points in the journey, such as transfers, will go a long way to eliminating mishandling and will allow airlines and their passengers to keep tabs on where their bags are at every step of the way.”

Over the past decade, total number of mishandled bags per annum has plummeted 47% from 46.9 million in 2007 to 24.8 million in 2018, while the annual bill footed by the industry has shrunk 43% to $2.4 billion, down from $4.22 billion in 2007.

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How Emirates is supporting and preserving biodiversity

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Taking its environmental responsibilities seriously and championing wildlife conservation across different corners of the planet, the Emirates Group is playing its part to support and preserve biodiversity.

The Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve and Emirates One&Only Wolgan Valley in Australia both illustrate the Group’s long-standing focus on protecting fragile ecosystems and support for sustainable tourism in very different parts of the world.  Both conservation reserves protect valuable ecosystems and at the same time provide unique and sustainable experiences for visitors from around the world.

The Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve

The Emirates Group funds the operations of the 225 square kilometre Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve (DDCR), an inland desert habitat that has been protected by government mandate since 2003. This is the largest piece of land that Dubai has dedicated to a single project and aims to preserve Dubai’s unique desert environment for future generations. The DDCR plays an important role in ecological research, actively collaborating with both local and international universities. The findings and results of the research studies help to enhance knowledge of the desert ecosystem, gather scientific data around rare and endangered desert species, monitor its balance and preserve its natural environment.

The reserve is also a focal point for conservation programmes aimed at restoring populations of some of the UAE’s wildlife, such as the Arabian gazelle, sand gazelle and Arabian oryx. Since their reintroduction into the DDCR, the antelope species have thrived, and their populations have significantly increased, triggering the process of looking into relocating some oryx and gazelle species to other protected areas within the region. Over 250 endangered Macqueen’s bustard (houbara) were also released this year with 25 of them fitted with tracking devices to monitor their movement and breeding progress.

In 2018, the DDCR was visited by more than 285,000 tourists, through Arabian Adventures, various Emirates partner tour operators, and the Al Maha Desert Resort. The DDCR offers low-impact desert experiences in addition to desert clean-up activities in coordination with Arabian Adventures. During 2018 the DDCR was accepted as a candidate for the IUCN Green List for Protected and Conserved Areas, a global standard for the world’s most effectively managed Protected Areas.

Emirates One&Only Wolgan Valley

Emirates has been supporting the protection of Australia’s extraordinary wildlife and plant life for over 10 years, through the conservation-based Emirates One&Only Wolgan Valley in New South Wales. The property was the first luxury resort in the world to receive an internationally-recognised carbon neutral certification from New Zealand based CarboNZero, undergoing a comprehensive greenhouse gas emissions assessment. Emirates One&Only Wolgan Valley also conducts regular research to identify opportunities and challenges for endangered species conservation. Efforts have also been underway to help restore vital vegetation and tree planting activities, which have helped to re-establish habitats for vital bird populations, essential for their long term survival.

Emirates and Emirates One&Only Wolgan Valley jointly funded the development of the WomSAT app and website in collaboration the University of Western Sydney to help researchers identify opportunities for wombat conservation. Wombats are threatened by sarcoptic mange, an unpleasant and often fatal skin disease that afflicts Australia’s largest burrow builder. The tool is used to record wombat sightings and track population health to help treat wombats afflicted by sarcoptic mange. Emirates One&Only Wolgan Valley is also spearheading a number of other conservation projects, such as the Wolgan River Restoration Project, an ongoing weed management programme, and supporting research projects with Western Sydney University.

United for Wildlife and The Buenos Aires Declaration

Since 2015, Emirates has continued its strong support for actions to stem the illegal trade in wildlife and wildlife products, which is having devastating consequences for endangered animals and the environment in many parts of the world. In 2018, the Emirates Group also signed the Buenos Aires Declaration on Travel and Tourism and Illegal Wildlife Trade, an effort led by the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) to reach a billion travellers with messages to fight the illegal wildlife trade and work with communities to develop sustainable tourism that provides livelihoods and protects wildlife. The WTTC and World Wildlife Fund are developing guidelines to eliminate illegal wildlife trafficking from the travel and tourism supply chains.

The Emirates Group has also adopted a zero-tolerance policy to wildlife trafficking and has set up training for its employees to identify and look out for warning signs of smuggled wildlife products during cargo transportation and screening. Emirates will not carry banned species, hunting trophies or any products associated with illegal wildlife activities.

Using its brand power to raise awareness around the illegal trafficking of endangered wildlife, Emirates emblazoned four of its A380s with special wildlife decals. Since then the aircraft have flown millions of kilometres across 48 cities in 29 countries on close to 6,000 flights taking this important message around the world and spurring conversation around wildlife preservation.

dnata Wildlife Conservation and Nature

dnata recently signed an MOU with the University of Pretoria in South Africa to support their research and rehabilitation projects. Under dnata4good, the partnership aims to safeguard wildlife and the environment by strengthening and enhancing research, veterinary training and awareness, increasing involvement through volunteer opportunities and ensuring needed measures are taken to care for injured animals and rehabilitate them to go back into the wild. The initiative will be partially driven by employee participation to protect fragile biodiversity in South Africa and to maintain balanced ecosystems.

Give a Ghaf

Emirates Group employees living in Meydan Heights (UAE) will be taking part in a Ghaf Tree planting event on 27 April in partnership with Goumbook. The event aims to raise awareness about the importance of conserving the living desert, with a specific focus on the Ghaf tree. The Ghaf is a drought tolerant, evergreen tree which can withstand harsh desert environments, and can be used for greening purposes whilst saving water.

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Airbus launches “Skywise Health Monitoring” with Allegiant Air

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Airbus has launched first operations of a new Skywise service – Skywise Health Monitoring (SHM) – with Allegiant Air on its A320s. Dynamically coupled with Skywise Reliability Services (SRS) and Skywise Predictive Maintenance (SPM), SHM is hosted on Skywise, gathering live diagnostic feeds from the aircraft through its *ACARS link to the airline’s information system.

Using the power of the Skywise aviation data platform, SHM collates and centralises the alerts, flight-deck effects, maintenance messages etc., prioritizes them, correlates any faults with the relevant troubleshooting procedures, highlights operational impacts, provides the maintenance history of the system (from the logbook and **MIS information collected through Skywise Core and stored in the data lake), allowing effective tracking of the alerts.

When fully deployed, and following the in-service feedback from Allegiant Air and other ‘early adopters’, SHM will support airlines’ Maintenance Control Centers, Line Maintenance and Engineering departments in identifying, prioritizing, analyzing and handling in-service events, enabling quicker decision-making and preparation of the optimal solution to ensure aircraft on-time dispatch and minimizing AOG risks.

Overall, SHM saves airlines time and decreases the cost of unscheduled maintenance. Natively interfaced with SPM and SRS to provide an integrated user-experience, and also ready to harness the new on-board Flight Operations and Maintenance Exchanger (“FOMAX”) data router which can capture over 20,000 real-time aircraft parameters, SHM enables end-to-end unscheduled event management/fixes for example by anticipating tools and parts’ availability closest to the aircraft. More early adopters will join in the months to come to pilot SHM for other Airbus aircraft, including A330, A350 and A380.

*ACARS = Aircraft Communication Addressing and Reporting System
**MIS = Maintenance Information System

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Passenger satisfaction at baggage collection jumps to new high with mobile notifications

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While the adoption of technology has improved passenger satisfaction across the airport journey, the biggest jump by far over the past year was at baggage collection. 2019 Passenger IT Insights shows that passengers are demanding more mobile services in relation to their baggage and where these are available, satisfaction levels have surged.

The research shows that 26% of passengers in 2018 used their mobile device to receive status updates on their baggage at arrival, up from 14% in 2017. At the same time, there is a growing demand from passengers to receive more baggage information via their mobile devices. A majority of passengers said they would definitely use mobile notifications providing information on baggage at arrival while a similar proportion said they would use their mobiles to track their bags or to report mishandled baggage.

These mobile services have dramatically improved passenger satisfaction levels. In 2018, those travelers who used their mobile to receive updates at baggage collection were 8.6% more satisfied than those who relied on traditional voice announcements or flight information screens for information. In fact, those who relied on traditional voice or screen announcements for updates ranked baggage collection as one of the lowest points in their journey while those receiving mobile updates perceived this step as one where they were most satisfied.

Peter Drummond, Director of Baggage at SITA, said: “Today airports and airlines are increasingly tracking bags at key points across their journey. While this tracking data is primarily used to provide better oversight of baggage and reduce mishandling, many operators are providing some, or all, of this information to passengers as a mobile service. This is being done either through the airline or airport mobile app or other notifications such as SMS.

“As we have seen from the survey, this service has a tremendously positive impact on passengers’ airport experience. It provides a significant positive boost to the way they perceive their travel, while reducing anxiety around baggage. It is a strong endorsement of the benefits of baggage tracking in addition to the improvements in mishandling rates we have already seen where tracking solutions are in place,” said Drummond.

A potential force driving adoption of mobile baggage services is the growing number of checked bags in 2018.

Drummond added: “More than 4.3 billion bags were checked in by passengers globally. This is an average of 1.2 bags per person, up from 1.08 bags per passenger in 2017. The rise in checked baggage is likely to drive demand for more services as passengers want to know where their bags are at all times. Those airports that track bags across the journey are well placed to offer this service.”

The key findings of the report are based on a survey of passengers from 20 countries across the Americas, Asia, Europe, Middle East and Africa, representing over 70% of global passenger traffic.

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