BAA and Emirates trial RFID tagging luggage

The days of the humble barcode may be at an end in the airline industry, as an ambitious test project at the world's busiest airport seeks to show the benefits to both airlines and passengers of labelling consumer luggage with RFID tags rather than just bar coding bags.

Long haul airline Emirates, along with the owner and operator of London's Heathrow Airport, BAA, have this week commenced a trial whereby baggage checked in by Emirates passengers flying between Heathrow Terminal 3, Dubai and Hong Kong, will have a RFID tag attached to the bag, and have it tracked through the course of its journey.

At present, bags are labelled at check-in with a paper label that is stuck around the handle. The label has a barcode, along with some basic information about the passenger's name, flight number, departure and destination airport codes. The barcode is scanned at multiple points as a bag travels through the maze of baggage belts behind the scenes at the airport, and is cross-referenced against a database to determine where the bag needs to go, who it belongs to, which flight its needs to be loaded onto etc.

However, the labels and the barcodes are susceptible to problems. Labels become wet, crumpled and obscured, meaning that the barcode readers, which rely on line-of-sight, cannot scan the bag and thus requires human intervention which is both costly and time consuming. Instead, using wireless radio-based RFID tags to hold all the data about the bag, line-of-sight is no longer an issue, and crumpled or wet tages become far less of a failure point, freeing up staff to work on more productive tasks and keeping the bags flowing.

"For the trial we are handling upwards of 300,000 bags. It is not about trying to reduce staff numbers, quite the opposite in fact, it is about trying to use our staff more productively and reduce delays and errors in the baggage process," said Stephen Challis, head of product development for BAA at Heathrow.

The trial is being run in conjunction with Motorola, which has retrofitted RFID readers to certain baggage belts in the bowels of Terminal 3, as well as equipping selected Emirates check-in desks with special printers that can print a traditional barcode, as well as program the RFID chip on the label.

The trial is costing £150,000 over the six months initial period, but as Challis explained, the costs of using RFID have plummeted compared with previous evaluations of the technology.

"Adding an RFID tag to the conventional label is adding a cost measured in pence to the cost of handling a bag. That compares well with 15 years ago, when we, along with other airports and airlines looked at the cost of technology and its was in the region of several pounds per tag."

"Either way, with it costing an average of $110 to reconnect a lost or delayed bag with its owner, it's potentially a worthwhile investment for all concerned."

The trial is being run in conjunction with partner airports in Hong King and Dubai, which are already running advanced trials of compatible RFID technology.

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