Inbound baggage is handled manually at the vast majority of airports, but the process is one of the most common reasons why baggage is delayed. In recent years, however, the industry has seen a few innovative airports rethink how inbound bags are sorted by use of automation – with significant benefits to both the passenger experience and airport finances.
By Kim Madsen
The airport industry is one of riveting technological advancements, but also, in some areas, conservatism.
Some processes are the way they are because of tradition and because a certain baggage handling structure is already in place. Not necessarily because of effectiveness. An example of this dynamic is how inbound bags are handled.
At airports today, inbound baggage is generally handled and sorted by hand rather than automatically.
The inbound baggage, brought from the aircraft on dollies or in containers (ULD), is unloaded manually onto different conveyors: one for transfer bag handling and one for sending arrival bags to the reclaim carousels. It’s a basic point-to-point delivery: a simple manual sortation process, which has been the industry standard for more than 30 years, but it is also quite prone to mistakes.
Arrival bags and transfer bags may end up mixed on the same belt, which increases the risk of a transfer bag ending up on a carousel and an arrival bag entering the airport’s baggage handling system (BHS) as if it was a transfer.
Then there is the matter of tracking and traceability, which is sorely missing in the existing manual sortation process. Once bags are misplaced and delayed, there is no efficient way of correcting the problem.
This is a huge missed opportunity. Local airport studies have found that approximately 40 percent of reported lost baggage was already in the airport when the passenger reported their loss. In these cases, tracking and traceability would make it relatively easy to quickly reconcile the passenger with their “missing” luggage.
And it’s a big problem. According to the 2024 SITA Baggage IT Insights report, delayed bags account for 77 percent of all mishandled bags. Of these, half is due to arrival mishandling (4 percent) and transfer mishandling (46 percent).
A reasonable estimation is that 90 percent of airports handle inbound bags manually.
But recent developments point to changes on the horizon: that it may be time to rethink how airports handle inbound baggage and that the technology is ready to overhaul the old-fashioned manual way.
A handful of airports have adopted new solutions and automation technologies to handle inbound bags much more efficiently than the conventional layout is able to. And the advantages are plenty: both in terms of the passenger experience and airport finances.
By relocating the sortation of the inbound baggage to the domain of the highly automated BHS, each piece of luggage can be tracked and traced.
This means the airport no longer requires ground handlers to carry out error-prone manual handling of the inbound baggage.
San Francisco Airport (SFO), Calgary International Airport (YYC) and Oslo Airport (OSL) are some of the prominent airports to have implemented automated solutions for handling inbound baggage.
In all cases these are tote-based systems that handle inbound, transfer and outbound processes in a CrisBag ICS system.
With an automated arrival baggage system, inbound baggage is taken via tugs from a flight and delivered straight to a BHS infeed. All the baggage is unloaded directly into the BHS. It doesn’t matter if it’s final destination bags or transfer bags. The BHS takes care of the entire sortation process and puts every bag on track to the correct baggage carousel or transfer destination.
Avoiding human error during the sortation of arrival and transfer bags is a massive advantage, and there are many other benefits – in regards to tracking and traceability, for example. Each inbound bag remains in the same individually-tracked and traced tote throughout the BHS process.
As a result, every bag is always traceable. In the rare instance when a bag is delayed or misplaced, it is easily and quickly located. This saves the passenger from a lot of anxiety during what is an already difficult moment – ‘baggage collection’ has been found to be the most stressful part of traveling in airports – and the airport from the cost involved in recovering the baggage and reuniting it with passengers.
On top of that, the 100 percent tracking and traceability at every stage of the baggage handling guarantees compliance with the IATA Resolution 753.
The 100 percent tracking and traceability of an inbound baggage solution such as with the CrisBag system could also facilitate groundbreaking services to improve the passenger experience and create new revenue streams for airports.
100 percent in-built tracking capability also opens for the possibility to allow the passengers to follow the progress of their luggage throughout the travel journey via an app. Upon arrival the passenger receives a code to use to both verify their identity and open a kiosk to collect their bag, whenever it is convenient.
The service is called baggage claim on demand. It is the automated sortation and scanning of arriving baggage that facilitates the whole process.
Baggage claim on demand is both an optional upgrade for passengers that may have specific needs with their luggage, and an opportunity to generate new income streams for the airports.
Going forward, airports could offer a variety of services based on the technology. For example, passengers might be able to have their luggage delivered directly to a hotel or home address simply by clicking on the app.
A modern and well-designed ICS can incorporate a small baggage hotel in which batches of arrival bags are accumulated and sorted – just like a baggage make-up process – for pick-up by the courier service who provides the luggage delivery service.
Within the airport industry there has been some concern about whether the capacity of a BHS is geared to handle both arrival and departure bags.
However, with the most modern ICS systems designs that shouldn’t really be too much of an issue. Arrival and departure is generally peaking at two different times, meaning that if you mix arrival bags into the baggage handling system you don’t need to have double the capacity.
You’re basically just utilising your system even more efficiently as there won’t be the same amount of downtime.
Granting the BHS access to the baggage within minutes of its arrival unlocks a list of potential benefits:
Manual handling of inbound baggage has long been the standard of the airport industry, but the technology and systems are now available to go in a new direction – with significant benefits to both the passenger experience and airport finances.
