Mishandled Baggage could cost Air Transport Industry US$5 Billion by 2008

Mishandled baggage costs the global air transport industry around US$ 2.5 billion annually, and that figure could double by next year, one of America’s leading technology experts and inventors warned at a conference in Dubai this week.

Dr Morton Greene, president of US technology company Inkode Corporation, told delegates at the Ground Handling Middle East Conference that 30 million bags belonging to air passengers are delayed or misdirected every year, with 204,000 of these being lost or stolen.

Quoting figures produced by industry expert SITA, Dr Greene used the conference, part of the three-day Airport Show taking place at Airport Expo Dubai, to unveil ground-breaking technology designed to revolutionise baggage handling and reduce these losses.

His invention, the Chipless Remote Identification System (CRiS), uses radio frequency technology to accurately track bags. Inkode Corporation has partnered with Kenzi Technology, a smart security solutions company based in Abu Dhabi, to launch CRiS technology throughout the GCC region. It estimates that the market will be worth an annual US$ 20 million and has used the Airport Show as an opportunity to make contact with regional airports and civil aviation authorities.

Currently baggage handling systems use barcode labels to track luggage, however this technology is prone to failure with damaged, misread or lost barcode tags the cause of the majority of lost luggage. Around 15% of bar codes are incorrectly read by the tracking equipment initially or during transfer to the aircraft. Bags lost by the tracking system have to be sorted manually and around 1% of these are never reunited with their owners.

Inkode’s CRiS technology, on the other hand, uses special nano-resonators incorporated into the baggage tag material that can be easily tracked by a reader and provide unique codes for identification. Unlike chip-based Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology it is economical, not prone to damage by airports’ explosive screening systems and cannot be hacked into or cloned. The technology can also be incorporated into boarding cards permitting ticketed passengers to be tracked through the airport, linking the passenger to their baggage.

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