Experts attribute airline baggage losses to untapped technology

Experts in the aviation and technology sectors are hinging the recurrent baggage loss by domestic airlines to untapped technology, which is able to track passengers’ baggage from the point of boarding to the point of flights arrival.

They say airlines could otherwise have saved millions of naira being spent on compensating passengers for lost luggage with the introduction of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) baggage tracking technology.

Few weeks back Medview Airline apologised to its passengers over the delay in the arrival of some of their baggage from London to Lagos.

The aircraft returned without the affected baggage following the inability of Gatwick Airport authorities to screen them.

Lookman Animashaun, Chief Operating Officer of the airline said “Gatwick Airport had on arrival of the aircraft said it had no capacity to screen the baggage as only a handful of its workforce was on duty because of holiday.”

On the other hand, the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) last week issued N6million fine to Arik Air Limited over passengers’ baggage loss.

The NCAA also ordered the airline to pay its passengers whose baggage were delayed on the London to Lagos route between Dec. 2 and Dec. 4 , $150 each as compensation.

These developments are coming at a time when international airlines have gone ahead to deploy RFID, which uses electromagnet fields to automatically identify and track tags attached to objects. This will allow customers to track their luggage throughout its travel, the tags are scanned whilst on the conveyor belt on its way into the aircraft and an alarm goes off for it to be redirected if the baggage does not belong on that flight.

Femi Longe, Director at Co-Creation Hub, told BusinessDay that most of the technology geeks and gurus that we have in Nigeria are focused on software development and not hardware and so Nigeria may have to import RFID hardware technology for its local airlines to reduce the amount of missing luggage and airline expenditure on passenger compensation for lost luggage.

“Most of the geeks and inventors in the technology hub and in Nigeria at large are software experts and even the ones that do hardware are more into electrical and not electronics,” he said.

Prior to the introduction of this technology, Delta airline and British Airways deployed this technology to enable passengers on their flights track their baggage.

As foreign airlines introduce RFID on bag tags which automatically identify and track tags, Nigeria may not be able to gain the full benefits of this technology as the country’s technology industry is currently focused on software development, therefore neglecting hardware manufacturing of computer and tracking devices such as the RFID.

Last year, delayed, damaged and stolen bags cost the air transport industry a total of $2.3 billion in Europe, according to SITA, an aviation communication and technology company that track baggage performance each year.

 

IFEOMA OKEKE