Heathrow T3 tackles lost luggage with RFID

Heathrow airport is trialling RFID tracking technology that will help make the nightmare of lost and mishandled luggage a thing of the past for travellers.

Passengers flying to and from Dubai out of Terminal 3 with Emirates airline will have a tiny chip embedded in their luggage tags.

Airport operator BAA hopes this chip could save airport staff hours of time by slashing the number of suitcases with tags which need checking manually - a laborious process that is currently required for tens of suitcases at T3 every day.

The RFID chips, containing passenger names and routes, eliminate many of the problems of using traditional barcoded tags.

Chips are far easier for machines to read as they do not need to be in line of sight of scanners, are not prone to being crumpled and smudged and doesn't need to be checked against a central database.

The technology also makes it easier to track bags throughout their journey.

BAA hopes to recoup the £150,000 cost of the six-month trial from efficiency savings in baggage handling and reductions in the cost of returning lost baggage to customers.

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At Hong Kong Airport, where the RFID system has been in use since 2005, the number of unreadable tags has fallen from approximately 15 per cent of the 38 million bags it processes each year to roughly three per cent.

BAA has begun the trial with Emirates, during which time it expects to process 300,000 bags, allowing it to compare how effectively the RFID system at Heathrow and Dubai airports cuts misreads compared to the barcode system.

Fliers will also be able to choose to receive a text message when their luggage is on the carousel in the arrivals lounge - triggered by the tags passing RFID scanners fitted on two conveyors in T3.

Stephen Challis, head of product development at BAA Heathrow, said: "In effect the bag is travelling with its own passport… improving the certainty around the operation and reducing the manual intervention that's required, which we believe will improve the overall efficiency of the bag system at Heathrow and eventually the rest of our airports."

He added: "For the customer it's about having information within your hands as to where your bag is and we think that's a great thing too."

RFID equipment has been installed at nine Emirates check-in desks with staff applying tags with both the chips and barcodes to luggage at check-in.

Tags still contain both the barcode information and RFID chips and Challis expects that Heathrow would continue to run both systems until all 180 destinations that serve the airport have upgraded to RFID.

BAA says the database linking the information on the chip to the passenger mobile number will be deleted as soon as the flight has been dealt with.

Technology firms ALSTEC, Arinc, Arup, Fujitsu and Motorola are partnering with BAA in running the trial.