chrispeng [ad_1]
Some airlines have tried passenger baggage tracking and notification many years ago. A long time ago, the form of baggage tags was coded barcodes. United Airlines and Northwestern Northwest scanned the baggage tags when the baggage got on and off the plane. Transamerica began to join the ranks in 2009. By 2011, Delta Air Lines experimented with real-time baggage tracking and notification services for passengers, after which US Airways also started the pilot. Although the idea of real-time baggage tracking is great, it relies heavily on the reliability of tracking and scanning technology. Obviously, manual scanning of barcodes on luggage is not suitable for real-time tracking-airlines have long known that RFID is a suitable technology. Delta Air Lines even started testing in 2003, but RFID was indeed too expensive at that time. Around 2000, the cost of each passive RFID was $1.
RFID is the abbreviation of Radio Frequency Identification. RFID technology first originated in the United Kingdom and was used to identify the identities of enemy and friendly aircraft in World War II. It became commercially available in the 1960s. RFID technology is an automatic identification technology. The U.S. Department of Defense stipulates that all military supplies must use RFID tags after January 1, 2005; the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommends that pharmaceutical manufacturers use RFID to track frequent fraud from 2006 Medicines. The application of RFID technology by retail companies such as Walmart and Metro has promoted the upsurge of RFID applications all over the world. At present, the price of passive RFID tags in China is quite cheap. For example, the price on an e-commerce website is basically around RMB 0.30 per tag.
The basic principle of RFID is to track objects through radio waves. Unlike barcodes, RFID does not require a reading device (scanner) to face the target, which means that the use of RFID can obtain great flexibility and accuracy. Moreover, for passengers, the luggage tag has not changed, and it looks like a normal tag, although the airline will add a small chip to the RFID luggage tag. It is not the first time that airlines have used RFID technology. Air New Zealand, Qantas and Alaska Airlines have all provided frequent flyers with permanent RFID luggage tags. Although the price of passive RFID is very cheap, adding one to each luggage tag is not a small cost.
At the end of April, Delta Air Lines officially announced the use of RFID baggage tracking technology, becoming the first airline in the United States to provide passengers with real-time baggage tracking services for all passengers. Delta Air Lines handles 120 million pieces of luggage each year, and RFID will replace the manual scanning method of bar codes—an industry standard that has been used since the early 1990s. The RFID baggage tag printer writes passenger and baggage information into the RFID tag and obtains it efficiently, accurately and automatically through an RFID scanner. By the fourth quarter of 2016, Delta Air Lines passengers can use the “FlyDelta” mobile app to know the location of their luggage at any time.
Mr. Bill Lentsch is the senior vice president of Delta Air Lines Airport Passenger Services and Cargo Department. “Our goal is to accurately control the information of every piece of baggage on every flight,” he said. “Delta invested $50 million in this. 344 stations around the world have been transformed.” In the terminals that have been transformed, the overall accuracy of integrating RFID technology into baggage handling has reached 99.9%, including baggage sorting and transfer processes. The original barcode-based scanning accuracy is only 97-98, and it requires a large number of manual scanning. For passengers, RFID means better service. “Similar to passengers’ demands that they can know the flight schedule changes through the’fingertip’ operation, passengers also want to know the information about checked baggage,” said Mr. Tim Mapes, Delta Chief Marketing Officer. “The’Fly Delta’ mobile app is the industry’s first RFID technology enables interactive baggage tracking, which may become a new industry standard.”
Delta’s team deployed a total of 4600 scanners, 3800 RFID luggage tag printers, and 600 station-level readers, making the entire baggage handling process fully automated, and it can be completed on all Delta’s main routes and connecting flights. Baggage tracking. In Delta’s main 84 stations, RFID readers are installed on 1,500 baggage conveyor belts-if the baggage enters and exits the plane correctly, the green light will light up, otherwise the red light will light up to indicate that the baggage needs other processing.
At present, if a passenger misses the connecting flight, the ground service personnel need to manually scan all the luggage to find out the luggage of the passenger and attach the luggage tag of the new flight. With the RFID scanner, the staff can quickly find the corresponding luggage. “We have carefully studied each step of baggage handling and improved them to reach the advanced level of the industry,” Lentsch said. “RFID is a tool for Delta to widen the lead gap.” In the past 10 years, optimized processes and technology have been improved. Helped Delta Air Lines reduce the baggage error rate by 68%, making Delta a leader in baggage handling among American international airlines. In 2015, the U.S. Department of Transportation selected Delta Air Lines’ baggage handling performance to be the best in six months and the year. Although the overall investment is huge, Delta and its travelers have indeed benefited tremendously from it.
[ad_2]
