RFID for luggage puts an end to lost bags--maybe

As RFID tags march on towards their eventual tagging of all things known to man, this time they're landing in your luggage for more efficient tracking. McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas has gotten three airlines to employ a system where tagged bags are able to all go through a single explosive screening and then get automatically routed to their correct destination, or get back to there if they're flagged for further screening. They're claiming 99.5% accuracy, so try not to be the 0.5% mmkay?

[Via The Wireless Weblog]

[Jeroen @ Dec 19th 2005 2:31AM]

99.5% accuracy sounds alright, but considering the volume of travelers, this thill means probably hundreds of missing bags each day!
Add the luggage that lost their RFID tag to this number, and you have a big mess at the airport.

[skype_fan @ Dec 19th 2005 2:31AM]

What's the news in this one ? HKIA has RFID for more than one year now, and I'm sure they are not the only ones. Maybe in the US this is news, however outside I don't think so.

[Steve @ Dec 19th 2005 2:31AM]

99.5%??

What is that, .6 Sigma??

Does anyone really believe that losing 1 in 200 bags is acceptable? Especially when each one should have both a paper tag and a RFID tag designating which flight it should be on.

No thanks guys, I haven't lost one I carried on myself so I'll keep doing that until you can get it to 99.9%.

[DarkFader @ Dec 19th 2005 2:31AM]

I want a system that combines luggage tracking, RFID'd passports/ID cards, security gates and video camera's.
I think suitcases should come with difficult to remove RFID tags. Of course these should be reprogrammable to make sure it cannot be exploited for uses other than intended.

[PhilJ @ Dec 19th 2005 2:31AM]

Funny, this comes on my last day working as a programmer in luggage handling for an airline.

There are a lot of initiatives to help control lost luggage already in place, many of them in a 'pilot' phase, just not announced to the public. In the future, you will see RFID in use at most airports, as well as heavy use of robotics to help get those bags on a flight.

The company I work for (for the next 6 hours) actually does not feel 1 in 200 bags is acceptable. I can smell crap a mile away, but there is a lot of work being done to avert this; most difficulty is due to airlines still relying on legacy mainframe systems.

I think within the next several years, lost luggage will be even more rare than it is now. At least for the major airlines that can afford it.

[theSAWzall @ Dec 19th 2005 2:31AM]

Steal a couple of pens for the rest of us. Just make sure they don't have RFID tags on them ;)

[John Stone @ Dec 19th 2005 2:31AM]

>all go through a single explosive screening

is this screening by explosion? - I guess destroying the bags fewer get lost.

[George Johnson @ Dec 19th 2005 2:31AM]

It might interest the commenters to know that in airline systems today, the read rates range from the 70 percent rate up into the 90s. It would be absolutely unheard of for an optical (bar code) system to have anything approaching the accuracy of RFID.

A misread in an RFID system does not mean a lost bag (just as it does not mean that in a barcode system--thank goodness). As with other applications, I expect that RFID will allow a significant leap forward in the aviation world.

[Hagrid @ Dec 19th 2005 2:31AM]

RFID for the bag is all very well, but as usual they're missing the point. Who cares where they track your bag to, you only want it to be in one place, on your aircraft, preferably without some baggage handler or TSA screener rifling through it first to find his kids Xmas presents.
The only system that makes sense to me is the one I heard of on Gizmag, where two brits have a thing called a Luggage Passport. The RFID angle is that one RFID chip goes in your bag, the other in the passport. Both are scanned as you move through the airport and if both don't make it to the plane, and alarm is raised. Sounds simple enough to me. Of course, making sure your bag arrives on board with you is not as important as impressing shareholders, so don't expect a sudden worldwide takeup of the idea.

One last point, most of the truly "lost" luggage as opposed to that stolen at will, is lost through the luggage destination information being torn off the handles. It seems unlikely that putting RFID on the same tags will do more than allow the system to trace all the torn off tags, not the bags. That won't be much of a relief for the hundreds of thousands whose bags disappear each year!

H@grid

[D Stone @ Dec 19th 2005 2:31AM]

nice, Paul! If they're going to lose our bags anyway, they might as well lose them with technology.