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Improving Baggage Tracking, Security and Customer Services with Rfid in the Airline Industry
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Abstract: Radio frequency identification (RFID) has been identified as one of the ten
greatest contributory technologies of the 21st Century. This technology has found a rapidly
growing market, and an increasing variety of enterprises are employing RFID to improve
the efficiency of their operations and to gain competitive advantage. In the aviation
industry, major airports/airlines have been looking for the opportunity to adopt RFID in
the area of baggage handling for a long time. Many pilot tests have been done at numerous
U.S., European, and Hong Kong airports. RFID tags were found to be far more accurate
than bar codes, and their performance was also measured to be well above that of bar
codes. This paper presents the state of RFID adoption planning, architecture and
implementation at a major airline, with a special focus on improved services due to
improved baggage handling, on increased airport/airline security and on frequent flier
program services. This is accomplished by integrating RFID technology together with
networking and database technologies.
Keywords: Radio Frequency Identification; RFID; baggage handling/tracking; airline
industry; customer-service
1 Introduction
Developments in logistics have been changing the world faster than ever [1].
Radio frequency identification (RFID) is an emerging technology that is
increasingly being used in business and industry. RFID systems have three main
components as shown in Figure 1.
* The tag: RFID tags are chips embedded in items which store and transmit
information about these items. Most RFID tags store data that identifies a
specific item.
D. Mishra et al. Improving Baggage Tracking, Security and Customer Services with RFID in the Airline Industry
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* The reader: RFID readers are radio frequency transmitters and receivers that
communicates with the tags. Readers, using an attached antenna, receive data
from the tag and then pass it to a computer system for processing.
* The computer system: The computer system receives the data from the RFID
reader through a cable or wireless connection for storage, interpretation and
action.
Figure 1
A Simplified View of an RFID system
Owing to its “MOST” (mobility, organizational, systems and technologies)
characteristics, RFID has received considerable attention and is considered to be
the next wave of the IT revolution [2]. RFID can allow any tagged item to be
mobile and intelligent and to communicate with an organizations overall
information infrastructure [3]. The main applications of RFID are in aviation,
retailing, the food industry, hospitals, libraries, animal detection, building
management, waste management, museums, etc.
The global business environment is changing very quickly [4]. The new, global
economy is the economy of knowledge and ideas, where innovative ideas and