We don’t know about you but whenever we fly, we spend the whole time worrying about losing our luggage.
It’s never happened to us, but the concept of losing all the goodies we’ve bought while on holidays really puts us on edge.
Well today, we’re feeling a little bit more at ease about our future travels, because according to SITA’s 2018 Baggage Report, airlines are hugely improving their rate of baggage delivery.
According to the report, baggage mishandling has dropped by 70 per cent since 2007.
The report marks 2018 as a turning point for the global air transport industry as airlines increasingly adopt baggage tracking technologies.
Services like real-time notifications and fast self-service bag drop will be more commonplace and 2018 is the year that the International Air Transport Association (IATA) Resolution 753 comes into effect which will see the industry increase baggage tracking, the report said.
“Over the last decade, we have seen significant improvements in bag management as airlines have taken advantage of technology,” Barbara Dalibard, CEO, SITA said in a release.
“Now with IATA’s drive for 100 per cent bag tracking, technology adoption will rise further.”
“End-to-end tracking produces data which reveals where improvements can be made in operational processes.”
“While we won’t see a sudden change in 2018, it is a real turning point for the industry as airlines begin to unlock the value of the tracking data for the 4.65 billion bags they carry.”
The growth in passenger numbers globally puts considerable pressure on the industry’s baggage systems and processes.
With the rise to more than 4 billion passengers in 2017, the airlines did pretty bloody well to reduce the rate of mishandled bags, if you ask us.
In fact, at 5.57 per thousand passengers it was the lowest level ever recorded.
Despite the improvement, mishandled bags cost the industry an estimated $2.3 billion in 2017 so there is considerable scope for cost savings from airline investments in end-to-end bag tracking.
