Sydney Airport to Instate RFID Baggage Tags 82
AcidAUS writes "Australia's Sydney Airport is investigating high-tech tagging methods for baggage handling, which could greatly reduce the number of bags that go missing each year. Industry experts say that baggage mishandling costs the industry globally $US1.7 billion each year, and that much of this cost is due to failures in the barcode-based tagging system."
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Good God man, the whole fabric of spacetime would be put at risk.
Unfortunatly (Score:5, Interesting)
In almost all cases, baggage IS correcty tagged, but it's as always the human factor which fails to function correctly. Because all security restrictions, the baggage is now in many cases manually examined and the volume of the baggage traffic and personal stress are still the main causes for missing or damaged baggage.
Re:Unfortunatly (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll tell those wallys that the existing tags are just as strong, or stronger than any plastic rfid. At 7 cents per sticker vs $1.00 per tag, it sounds like a scam to pass on inflated costs and pocket the difference. Don't see how they will re-cycle used tags, or allow customers to 'register' their own tags.
It also removes the incentive for on-time planes by rewarding those who don't check in hours early. The number of metal'ish suitcases means they don't work well.
A study of lost luggage shows that airports do not attempt to find the owners- never more true since CAPS.
Lets see, added cost, no tangible benefit, risk of tag dropping off and grinding conveyor belts, and no cost benefit transparancy . Give them a dunce hat.
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Unless I misread TFA, it's 21 cents per RFID tag, which is "ten times" the cost of the barcode.
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1) Sydney Airport buys lots of RIFD chips from XXX RIFD supplies, where XXX is owned or invested in by Macquarie Bank
2) ???^H^H^H Charges airport users for the priviledge of using RIFD chips for baggage handlers
3) Profit!
For those who are unaware of Australian businesses, Macquarie Bank has it's finger in just about every single pie you can think of.
Re:Unfortunatly (Score:5, Insightful)
"The Human Factor fails to function correctly"
This what RFID helps to a certain extent. With the amount of stress the security and baggage personnel have their mistake level has gone up greatly. RFID allows an automated system that prevents this and makes it so they can just focus on their work.
Though I am very much against RFID in passports. RFID in baggage makes a lot of sense. Just google Delta, RFID and Atlanta to see some case studies where RFID reduced the number of lost baggages and also reduced the amount of processing time it took for a bag. In some cases by 33%.
This allows less load on airport employees and is actually needed to handle the increased traffic. So like you said growing passenger numbers and security is a concern but unless you are going to add more employees (which face it any compay won't do) you need technology to do it for you.
In this case the best tech for that is RFID.
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Exactly, because you can remove the RFID tags from the baggage when you're leaving the airport, most of the attacks against passport RFID systems simply don't apply to baggage RFID.
Now, if baggage companies started embedding RFID tags in my luggage, it would be an entirely different matter.
Re:Unfortunatly (Avoid the mess all together...) (Score:1)
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One thing that passengers can do to limit lost/misplaced/mishandled luggage is to put a sheet with your itinerary in with your checked luggage. Include your name, home address, home phone number, cell number (if you have a cell), your flight number (both out and back) your departure and destination airports, times, where you are staying, and their phone number.
Going on the presumption that the person
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Trouble is, the last time a baggage handler went through my checked luggage, it was to steal stuff. In which case, giving them my home address and the dates when the house will be empty is a bit counter-productive.
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Put a tag on the outside of your baggage with your name, home address, and home and work phone numbers. The airlines provide free stick-on tags. Most carriers also have "privacy tags" which conceal this information from passersby.
Put the same information inside each bag, and add an address and telephone number where you can be reached at your destination city.
http://airconsumer.ost.dot.gov/publications/bagtip s.htm [dot.gov]
If you do a search for 'luggage airline put de
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The advice not to put your home address comes from a lot of sources, such as Transport Canada at http://www.tc.gc.ca/aboutus/travel/Air/brochure.ht m [tc.gc.ca] which says "Label your luggage. Do not use your home address or business title. Luggage tags with flaps that hide your name and address are a smart idea. These steps will help protect your anonymity
RFID automatic error 1/3rd printed (Score:2)
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riiiiiight.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:riiiiiight.... (Score:5, Insightful)
A scanner can only pick up bar codes that pass directly in front of its laser; wet, folded or smudged tags are often unreadable, and scanners perform especially poorly when exposed to dirt or dust.
Whereas:
Utilizing radio waves instead of lasers, RFID doesn't require a direct line of sight between the reader and tag, and isn't affected by dirt or dust. RFID tags are generally more weather-resistant than paper labels, and the hardware is compatible with most existing baggage systems.
It actually sounds alright to me. I'll don my tinfoil hat when they attach it to passengers, but this looks like one place where RFID can be put to good use.
Re:riiiiiight.... (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree. With RFID you can route bags to the correct plane, or baggage claim automaticaly. You can flash lights and soundbuzzers if the wrong bag goes the whong way. You can also find the location of bags easily, as the readers cost a couple of hundrad bucks, there's no reason to monitor baggage flow at numerous locations.
As for your tinfoil hat, does it have a pocket [wikipedia.org] about six inches by four?.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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Not only that, but you can put scanners in the baggage hold and know that every bag in the hold is matched to a passenger who has already boarded. Much easier than a barcode reader.
Also, this summer, I had an experience where they simply turned the carousel off too early; my bag was actually still on the ramp up to the carousel. They had *no idea* where my bag was. With a scanner at the point where it hits the carousel (so the baggage people could say, "It was on the carousel, so someone must have taken it
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That's a good clarification of what I said. I'd add, however, that no passenger needs to be tagged; the tag on your luggage is linked to your boarding pass when you check the luggage, so all they have to know is that the boarding pass has been scanned (as the passenger enters the jetway; I suppose an evildoer could exit the jetway without actually boarding the plane, but they do watch for that sort of thing).
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At your service:
http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/2100-1009_11
I suggest a fur-lined hat for winter use.
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I suggest a fur-lined hat for winter use.
Fur-lined? I think steel wool is much more appropriate...
Re:riiiiiight.... (Score:5, Insightful)
In this instance, the lack of 'security' of rfid is one of it's more useful features.
The system allows a tagged bag to be tracked over it's entire (in airport) journey from check in to luggage hold automaticaly, meaning that many more check points can be used without slowing down the baggage handling, and any luggage in the wrong place can be flagged quickly. It also means that bags cannot 'accidentaly' walk through the wrong door without the tag being removed making stealing luggage a little more difficult.
Re:riiiiiight.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Now depending on the context you might not want someone to be able to read the information unless they have some privileged status (border guard, checkout assistant) in which case having an RFID tag is rather like having a barcode printed on your forehead. I don't want a barcode printed on my forehead, so I probably don't want an RFID passport, but baggage which has an exposed barcode anyway - what's the difference?
Now if they don't do something stupid like including your name, address and vital statistics on the tag (which I'm sure they won't as it would cost much more for the increased capacity tag) then it really just means they don't need line of sight to read the tag so that dirty/crumpled/obscured tags won't foul things up. If it is the same information that an arbitrary person could get with a barcode reader as opposed to an RFID reader then it might just well be a better solution.
I smell an ulterior motive.
And what would that be? The airline already know *everything* about you which they can glean from your baggage by cross referencing the ID on the barcode with their database. Unless FRID tags can read your mind
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Bzzzt, no. Ulterior motives are oderless; posterior motives, on the other hand, have a distinctive scent.
Sorry, the editor started it. At 5:00 A.M., I felt very vincible when my brain didn't cognize "instate" as a valid word.
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Google didn't either http://www.google.com/search?q=define:+instate [google.com]
I'm all for making up words in private with friends and cow orkers but on the front page of a busy web sites is just play dumb.
So that 1.7 billion figure... (Score:2)
It happened to me once. I then filed a claim for missing luggage, and they called me 2 hours later saying it went on the wrong flight and to come pick it up (or they could deliver it the next day).
Grumpy
Re:So that 1.7 billion figure... (Score:4, Interesting)
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I went on holiday from London to Egypt, after waiting for every bag to be collected, my luggage was still not present, however there was a bag with my luggage tag present (it really wasn't mine). I got the Sharm El-Sheik airport worker to write an incident report and telex London to find out where my bag actually was. The next day (after I had hastily tried to get some clothes) I was phoned by the holiday reps to come back to Sharm airport
Re:Greasing the public before placement in the ove (Score:1)
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Yeah, doesn't anyone care about the right of baggage not to be monitored all the time, and treated like a criminal. It's important. First they monitor baggage, and then they'll put tattoos on your head and kill you.
Re:Greasing the public before placement in the ove (Score:3, Informative)
That's not a futuristic scenario anymore... Sweden, a leader in this field, now has RFID tags in passports and has been collecting and storing DNA samples of everyone born since 1980. It's true, check it out.
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KLM already does at Amsterdam (Schiphol) (Score:4, Informative)
Re:KLM already does at Amsterdam (Schiphol) (Score:4, Funny)
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1. Pay insurance fee via credit card.
2. Be the one whose luggage has gone missing in KLM's price drawing.
3. Get rich!
Hey, wait this three-steps-thingy is actually complete?!
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Not true. The Warsaw Convention [wikipedia.org] strongly limits the amount airlines are obliged to pay for lost baggage.
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I suspect the "unlimited liability in the event of negligence" is probably more to do with passenger safety - the airline industry's very heavily regulated, and if negligence caused a plane crash there would be serious head-rolling.
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Finally something makes sense (Score:1)
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Throwing meney at the problem? (Score:1, Interesting)
On the other hand, what I would like to see is a system that allows *me* to track my ba
The Next Step (Score:1)
Couriers (Score:3, Interesting)
How about using RFID tags on fucking FedEx, UPS and DHL deliveries? The current system is so illogical and antiquated, it's ludicrous. God knows how many times I've checked in on an item only to find the page hasn't been updated for four days. Sure, sometimes it works (I had updates about three times a day when tracking an item from Manhattan to Osaka using FedEx, that was nice) but most of the time it fails horribly and you come to know the tracking number as merely a "Reference Number For When The Package Goes Missing Or Gets Delayed"...
Not really a new tech (Score:5, Interesting)
Contrary to what some posters assumed, rfid DOES in fact help quite a bit the baggage handling system:
- rfid reader can read tags which sit on the bottom / opposite end of the suitcase, while barcode readers cannot do it. The overall positive-read ratio is much increased. The tags are smaller and less prone to tear-off/smearing of the barcode print
- rfid card readers can read many tags at a time, hence the conveyor line can be sped up a lot (as in: put all baggages on the truck to the runaway, and the rfid reader is put on top of the gate below which the truck passes)
- if the complete baggage info, such as final destination, status of x-ray-check, etc is stored on the tag (there are quite a few bytes in there), any tag reader can decode it and sort the baggage even in the absence of network connection , ie . without interrogating a central db. Smaller devices, not even wifi-connected, can be used to recover info from baggages that are found stray in any airside area (and a working 802.11 inside a bhs system or covering a complete runaway is radio nightmare,trust me).
Downside: if that info is not crypted, it could be eavesdropped...
Of course, the point is still valid that all the new anti-terrorism measures are quite a nightmare for airports and airline handlers, and have a great impact on operative efficiency.
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This does not prevent a few (a lot?) of the baggages to go misread, and end up on the line to the guy-with-a-barcode-scanner-in-his-hand queue. Afaik, rfid has lower error rates. Plus, I think the huge 6-sides readers cost more than the rfid reader does (that's why it's usual that many barcode readers deployed on the circuit are the lower-end 3 or 4-sided ones).
Umm.. I have a suspicion its abandoned luggage. (Score:1)
Just a thought.
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Impact on overall sortation rates (Score:1)
I can confidently say this will have bugger all effect. The scanning rates on the primary infeed scanners are already over 96%, we have secondary scanner that achieve 80+% (they are dealing with the bags that could not be read first time through) and manual enconding stations at the third level. So the chances of miss-reading
What happens when ... (Score:1)
I wouldn't mind.. (Score:1, Funny)
Paging Mr. and Mrs. Idiot who are still shopping or sitting at a bar, your flight is now fully boarded with the exception of you. You are holding up the plane, and we are about to have to remove your luggage. This will cause considerable delay to the other passengers who know how to GET TO THE FUCKING GATE ON TIME !
Why is there a hate of RFID on slashdot? (Score:2)
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There have been billions and billions spent marketing RFID for things it never was suited for. We hate the misapplication of technology, and this marketing machine behind RFID has caused it to be applied in many places it never should have been. Kinda like Java o
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Will they actually use it? (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, my bag didn't show. I asked the clerks to check the computer and find out where it was, and they said they couldn't. I eventually pressed them as to why, suggesting that the bar codes might be useful, and they said the bar codes were not actually ever scanned. Now, that may have been true, or they may have been trying to get rid of a pestering customer, but it was clear in any case that the computer did not know where my bag was. They could not even confirm that it had been loaded on the flight out of Calgary. They had no idea at all.
As it turned out, it had been mistakenly directed to the domestic arrivals carousel instead of the US connections carousel, and I was able to retrieve it and go on my way.
I would love it if some kind of actually-useful, actually-used baggage tracking system were implemented.
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I no longer fly United. In my opinion, (and I do a fai
Reality-based community on line one (Score:2)
It's called "stealing the baggage". It's been going on for decades. Organized crime has had a hand in it for as long. I once saw my zip up bag coming down the carosel opened wide and spilling clothes down the conveyor. That was a looonnng zipper; took some doing to get that open. The asshats unloading the plane were looking for a quick uptick in their personal monetary portfolio.
Baggage (Score:1)
I once flew from Cairns to Sydney, and my luggage flew from Cairns to Alice Springs. Took over 24 hours for QANTAS to locate and return my luggage, and when the guy did deliver it to me, he abused me, as though my luggage loss was my fault. I personally don't want to go through the experience again, as my medication was with my luggage.