In an era where human touch is not welcomed, baggage handling and retrieval are going the same way too, as discussed in SITA webinar on baggage solutions for the aviation industry in a post-Covid environment.

In his opening remarks Peter Drummond, portfolio director baggage, SITA, stated it has been a difficult year for the entire airline industry and the baggage community. On a positive note there has been a drop in the number of mishandled bags.

“Ordinarily seeing the low numbers of mishandled bag reports in WorldTracer (SITA/IATA service provided for the tracking of lost or delayed baggage) would be cause for celebration, but in this case our world has changed completely during this pandemic. And the effects are likely to be long lasting,” he added.

Apart from WorldTracer, the multinational information technology company also has SITA Bag Journey providing airlines and airports with tracing data that complies with IATA’s baggage tracking Resolution 753.

These solutions plus working together with air transport industry stakeholders had seen the number of mishandled bags “tumbled considerably by 45.8% from 46.9 million in 2007 to 25.4 million in 2019,” revealed Drummond. This reduction was achieved while passenger numbers were reaching 4.54 billion in 2019.

“The key milestone 2019 was a total rise of 2.4% on the mishandled bags, the lowest percentage increase since SITA started reported the mishandled bag trends since 2003” (see chart below)

Specific investments have helped deliver significant cost savings: automation, smart technology and, more recently, the International Air Transport Association’s Resolution 753, which requires airlines to track bags at the four main touchpoints (make-up, loading, transfer and arrival) across the journey, he added. The air transport industry’s annual bill for mishandled bags has been cut by 40.8% since 2007 to $2.5 billion last year.

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