RFID bag tracking by airlines might not fly

We're pretty RFID-happy these days — we want to use them on our kids, in our watches, and even in our elevators. One place they'd be really useful is in our luggage, to prevent that all-too-familiar occurrence of ending up on the ground to find your skivvies haven't followed. Airlines have been talking about implementing an RFID bag-tracking system for several years, but now they're in such dire financial straits that adding the tagging system doesn't look like it's in the cards. Even though they could save an estimated $650 million per year from the deployment of radio tags, it's not so clear how much will be required for an initial outlay, nor how quickly the airlines will be able to recoup the costs. For now, RFID tracking systems are seeing limited introduction at airports such as the McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas and Hong Kong International Airport. One American airline particularly interested in the technology is, not uncoincidentally, the one who has been consistently at the bottom of luggage-handling ratings: Delta. Good luck, Delta, though we wager it's gonna take a lot more than RFID tags to improve your customer satisfaction rankings.

[sherwin @ Dec 19th 2005 1:22AM]

Who actually flies Delta?

[JP @ Dec 19th 2005 1:22AM]

Last time I lost luggage (2 weeks ago) this wouldn't have even helped. They put 4 bags on the plane. Imagine everyone's (20 people or more) surprise at baggage claim when 4 bags come out and they say that's all folks. I'm not even sure that those 4 bags were even claimed.

It was USAirways. Don't fly with them. Ever.

[dthree @ Dec 19th 2005 1:22AM]

WIth the short range of RFID, is this really usefull?

[mveloso @ Dec 19th 2005 1:22AM]

#3,

RFID doesn't have to be short range. Those toll tags (EZ-Pass in the NY area) are RFID tags.

It's kind of silly that the airlines haven't done this. It's not as hard as you'd think to implement an RFID system. Bascially, you need readers, a database, and tags.

The problem is when you get into high-data situations, like every item in a Wal-Mart being read every 10 seconds. That's a couple of million data points being fed in every 5 seconds.

The airlines won't have anywhere near that much data. They will, though, have a lot more interference and load, being distributed and all.

Maybe they should contract with FedEx to do the tracking. FedEx's tracking system is pretty unbelievable. Last I heard (4 years ago), the average lookup time for a tracking number was around .3 seconds. Adapting their system to RFID shouldn't be a big deal, as long as you can get good data out of the readers.