First, it is a IATA standard Baggage Reconciliation and managements software tool. FirstBag™ Baggage Management: a real solution with real Security, financial and Operational benefits. What are the issues?
Did you know that the key areas that passengers remember about their airport experience are?
- The timeliness of check-in
- The services offered prior to boarding
- And bag retrieval at their final destination
Sadly, the second biggest passenger complaint relates to lost bags. In fact, 61% of frequent flyers report some form of baggage loss in the past 12 months! It’s a fundamental issue that is constantly reported, but not completely addressed by industry. Whose to blame? the airport? the airlines, the ground handlers? Ultimately it costs airlines and airports millions of dollars annually to process customer complaints due to lost baggage and this is surely passed onto the passengers. One leading US airline reportedly spends US$ 100 million a year relocating and returning one million of the 80 million pieces of luggage it transports each year. So, not only is there a significant pay-out to retrieve and ship the bag back to its rightful owner, but the loss of a frequent traveller customer.
Regardless of the cost, bags traveling without an accompanying passenger sounds like a huge security. No matter what happen with security x-rays scanning, the less bags which misconnect or reach its destination with the accepted parameters of positive loading must be good for the whole industry. So what will help the industry improve the situation to minimize any potential risk…
It’s no secret that there are great challenges in the baggage management industry, and airlines and airports are constantly searching for solutions to:
- Provide industry standard BRS (Baggage Reconciliation) and BMS (Baggage Management System)
- Reduce the percentage of lost baggage due to manual mishandling
- Reduce the number of misconnected baggage due to unorganized baggage management in the baggage handling area
- Reduce the time required for interline baggage (to less than the industry standard of 50 minutes between transfer flights)
- Ensure bags are authorized to be loaded on the right container
- Limit the Human error by providing the tools to make informed decisions
- Proactive communication of information of mishandled / misconnected baggage to passenger
- Increased baggage management in baggage area for optimized security of baggage from check in to baggage pick up at final destination
Zafire Aviation’s FirstBag™ has been developed to bridge the gaps in bag management design. The information is inputted via a simple Hand Held and all information is downloaded into an Internet-based back end system. One of the first systems to use the Internet, versus the traditional closed system with only limited access, it increases the transparency of information from the bag handler to the airline customer (or airport) using the software. Therefore, mitigating the amount of adhoc requests before a flight departs and increasing the communication flow between operations.
The commercial strategy to reduce misconnected luggage for Airlines with high interline baggage, has seen real improvement from 5% to below 1.5% saving this particular Asian carrier over $1m per year. Due to transparency of information, airline customers and baggage staff have significantly decreased the number of phone calls normally required for search and recover due to difference in systems. Now that the airlines have access to the information, they are able to identify the problem faster, to improve their own customer service to their own passengers.
To become part of our ever increasing customer base or to discuss your unique baggage management requirements for a Unique FirstBag™ implementation contact us at aviation@zafire.com.
