Think of anything that comes in or out of an airport and you will probably find that it can be tracked – or if it can’t yet, it very soon will be. Aircraft and baggage? Well, yes, we’ve had quite a bit of practice with those already, but how about vehicles, passengers, phones, food, passports, even skis? The list goes on. With airport management beginning to realise the potential uses and cost savings that technology such as radio frequency identification (RFID) can offer, we could be entering an era of complete, real-time traceability of every asset, piece of baggage and passenger in the airport.
In the modern world, with the increasing amounts of data being shared, we think nothing of using a smartphone to log our location into social networking sites or the fact that our car’s GPS unit is keeping track of our journey, and the same can be said of airports – we expect them to keep a tab on where our baggage is at any given moment. The thousands of movements every day of passengers, baggage, freight, vehicles, concession supplies and duty free have always provided opportunities for data gathering and processing, but increasingly technology is making this tracking process simpler and more valuable when it is linked to stable, well-designed and adaptable software systems, such as Zafire’s FirstBag baggage reconciliation system.
Tracking technology
In recent years, airlines have looked hard at how they can simplify their systems to make the experience of flight as easy as any other form of transport. But in many cases, while the airlines have become more efficient, this process has highlighted the traditional bottlenecks in airports such as check-in, security and baggage. Although it is almost impossible to change the behaviour of humans, we can use technology to make the process of getting people and their bags on and off an aircraft and through the airport considerably less painful. Although RFID technology has been around for nearly 20 years, its use in airports has only really been capitalised on recently. These small chips can be placed onto or inside pretty much anything from a luggage tag to a passport, a unit load device (ULD) to an airside vehicle, providing the airport with the ability to monitor all movements in real time. This technology means that almost anything that moves within the airport can be tracked, giving management a wealth of information to plan the most efficient use of resources and the quickest movement of passengers and bags. This means that aircraft can be turned around faster, which reduces the unprofitable time spent on the ground and potentially increases airport capacity. The announcement by Qantas a few years ago of the Airport of the Future project was one of the first steps towards achieving this goal. Premium frequent flyer passengers are issued with chip-embedded Qantas Cards and Q Bag Tags, allowing them to avoid airport queues, check themselves in with one touch of their Qantas Card and go directly to a bag drop station without needing to print a paper bag tag. Baggage is weighed and automatically assigned to the relevant flight with a baggage source message (BSM) that is sent to the Zafire baggage reconciliation system (BRS), FirstBag. The UK-based designer of FirstBag, Zafire Aviation Software Ltd, was the first company in the world to fully integrate permanent bag tag RFID technology into its BRS and this has been a key part of the success of the Airport of the Future project. Using tracking technology, the potential for increasing flow through an airport is a reality, meaning that a passenger can be checked in at an automated desk and their bag taken into the system without any human intervention. If the bag is fitted with an RFID tag, the only physical human contact it needs is the point at which it is loaded into the ULD – and with modern automated baggage systems, even this part may be considerably reduced. Passenger guidance can already be sent direct to their smartphones, thereby improving flow, reducing late arrivals at the gate and developing footfall for airport concessions by providing passenger relevant advertising.
Airside benefits
But it is not only landside that benefits from tracking technology. In fact, the greatest savings and efficiencies are actually to be found airside. In addition to developing FirstBag to significantly increase baggage handling efficiency, Zafire has introduced FirstTrak, which uses the latest telematics to give airport management and ground handling staff the ability to track all key vehicles that are airside, enabling them to plan and direct resources in the most cost- and time-efficient way. FirstTrak can also be configured to provide doorway access control and monitoring, which in turn contributes to overall site security. Airports are by their very nature large sites with many different companies, staff members and vehicles operating in them. Controlling who is using what machinery and where is critical to airport efficiency and safety. For plant and vehicle owners, being able to access precise, real-time information about where their plant is being used, for how long and by who leads to far more accurate planning, control and billing. The efficacy of this system was recently proved when a large airline discovered that its vehicles were actually being used by a competitor while its aircraft waited on stands for service. All this tracking technology means that there is a large amount of data available to airport management. Companies such as Zafire are at the forefront of developing systems that can capitalise on this information, providing up to the minute, operationally critical data to staff and enabling informed operational decisions to be taken quickly. It reduces the amount of human intervention required, in many instances taking away potential for error. The information that tracking provides us with can now be reliably used as a key component of business growth for every airport. So, now that digestible RFIDs have been developed, perhaps in the future we will be swallowing a small tablet at check-in? It could hold all the necessary details encoded to make sure that we head to the right gate following personalised messages sent to our phone or flagged onto signage, we board the right aircraft onto which our luggage has been loaded and our dietary needs are catered for without the need for flight staff to ask – all without the risk of losing our ticket or boarding pass. Perhaps we may need to overcome the greater challenge of customer acceptance, but the ability is there and in the future, all these things may come to pass!
