Emirates eliminates lost luggage
Emirates airlines is carrying out a trial involving the use of RFID technology to track passengers’ luggage.
Emirates, the Dubai-based airline, is carrying out a six month trial of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology to enable bags to be tracked at every stage of their journey – minimising the number of bags that go missing every year.
The AED 2 million (around £200,000) trial is the largest of its kind within the airline industry and will be carried out at three major international airports – London Heathrow, Dubai International and Hong Kong International – in conjunction with BAA, the world’s leading airport authority.
On check-in, luggage will be tagged with RFID chips. These chips will contain a unique bag code number, along with the bag’s route information. The chips are then read by computers at various stages of the bag’s journey to enable effective tracking and to give passengers “one less thing to worry about”.
Dale Griffith, Emirates’ Divisional Senior Vice President Airport Services, said: “Previous RFID trials by other parties on a smaller scale have shown that the technology almost eliminates scanner ‘misreads’, significantly improving the efficiency of the baggage system and customer experience. We are now applying this on a much larger scale at three major airport hubs, including Emirates’ Dubai home-base, thus allowing the trials to include most possible baggage handling scenarios, including international transit.
“We look forward to sharing the results of this trial with IATA [International Air Transport Association], who we know will be following developments closely. If this trial is as successful as we expect, Emirates will be encouraging airports across its network to embrace this technology. This could become a new industry standard for baggage handling.”
If the trial is successful, there is future potential for airlines to include a text messaging service for their passengers, using the data from the RFID technology, to alert them when their luggage reaches the baggage carousel.
An estimated 500,000 bags on Emirates flights will be tagged during the trial.
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Very much needed, hopefully then they will stop bending the truth when they ‘lose’ your baggage for 4 days. Rather convienent when the courier says they cannot deliver at the weekend because Emirates unprepared to pay extra for weekend delivery.
February 28th, 2008 at 12:07 amMy son was travelling for the first time abroad for his higher studies in the UK. I read lot of complaints about missing baggage with Emirates but I had no other choice except to book him into Emirates due to logistics problems. And lo, he lost his main baggage where all his clothes and other important documents were kept. More than losing it, it is the lack of warmth in addressing the issue that is irritating me. Their Ahmedabad office in India does not respond to my phone calls. Their London office does not repsond to my emails. My son, poor guy is in Leeds with just one pair of clothes which he has been wearing since the 11th of September. I’ve been wondering at the miserable situation that I myself had created for my son. I wish somebody from Emirates will read this and help my son. I was wondering what happened to their RFID technology. Is it to fool the passengers???????
September 14th, 2008 at 6:41 amMy sisters and I travel with emirates everytime we fly via Dubai to South Africa - it is a guarantee that at least one, if not two of our bags go missing… and yet again…. My sister’s bag never arrived at Glasgow yesterday? Will this nightmare ever end? P.S. Still awaiting the bag with no information on its whereabouts !
December 9th, 2008 at 4:34 pmSame here, was travelling on the 07.11.08 to SA through Dubai and not only did they lost my luggage completely they are only offering 100 USD as a compensation :S It means that I will get more for the first 3 days of missing luggage reimbursement (50 USD/day)or I hope I will (nothing about this was mentioned in the last email from Emirates). This is unacceptable for a company with its reputation and is simply ridiculous, only because the bag was light (5.5 kgs) does not mean 100 USD would be enough and even if I did stuff it with costless things, the 100 USD would only cover the cost of the bag. Now how can the company expect people to trust them with their belongings and fly with them? I dont mean to sound materialistic but how can you be satisfied if there was a trust violation in the relationship and a part of you is missing (how can you put a price on memorabilia anyways??). I have never lost my luggage with any other company and I surely did not expect it to happen with Emirates. Now for all I know my bag was not found, and it could be anywhere (surely it didnt evaporate/dissappear) so there are two options: someone else has my personal stuff like diaries, application forms or someone else have my personal stuff.. :S It used to be that when you pay for an air ticket you also pay for the safety of your belongings..
January 12th, 2009 at 5:51 pmI don’t know the results of this trial but given that my parents luggage has now been lost for 4 days with no updates, despite chasing, from Emirates the trial was obviously a waste of money!!
January 13th, 2010 at 9:08 pmAnd the RFID system, if it was being used, did not stop Emirates from losing one of my bags on a flight from Auckland to Sydney in January 2010. The bag never turned up . . . So I would say that the headline of the article above is demonstrably false.
March 11th, 2010 at 5:33 pmI lost my luggage between Dubai and South Africa worth over US$25,000 and those mo-fos won’t even call me to give an status update for over 1 months. The 24×7 customer service is handle by a cell phone which switched off most of the time. Typical ‘Arab Hospitality’ by the towelheads. They should be raising sheep rather than running airlines.
October 7th, 2010 at 4:47 am