SITA Baggage report 2014 has been published

SITA has published its yearly baggage report and announced an overall increase in performance. The full SITA Baggage report 2014 can be downloaded here.

All major Key Performance Indicators are up

In 2013, the total number of bags mishandled decreased 17.2% to 21.8 million, whereas passengers’ numbers increased 5.1% to 3.13 billion. We are far (fortunately) from the 46.9 million of bags mishandled in 2007 which was the peak year over the past 10 years. Transfer remains the traditional “pinch point” in the baggage handling process being the reasons for loss in 45% of the cases; followed by the “failure to load” that causes 16% of the mishandled bags.

Towards more self-service

Self-service application is a wished trend both for airlines and passengers:

• More than 60% of the airlines expect to enable missing bag reports via smartphones by 2016 (e-AHLreport on mobile, we are thinking about it!).

• Over half of the passengers say that they would use baggage status information if it was available (some passengers can already use e-AHLmanage!).

Air France and Dnata practices quoted in SITA report

SITA report mentioned the good practices of two of our customers Air France and dnata that offer new services improving the passengers’ experience.

Air France: “Early in 2014 Air France introduced a similar service [i.e. home-printed bag-tags], saving passengers time at the airport by allowing them to print their bag-tags at home up to 30 hours before the flight for insertion into reusable plastic holders. Initially offered to domestic passengers, Air France plans to roll out the service to its network throughout the year.”

Dnata: “dnata, the global air services provider operating at 76 airports worldwide and also the sole ground handler providing baggage services at Dubai International Airport, is exploring opportunities for passengers not to worry about their bags at the new Al Maktoum International Airport at Dubai World Central. It is exploring a complete city check-in with automatic transfer of bags to the airport and, for those arriving passengers staying in Dubai; bags will be transferred from the airport to their hotel in Dubai.

Bernd Struck, dnata Vice President of Baggage Services commented: “In the future customers won’t want to touch their bag at the airport but will want it to arrive at their destination and not have to worry about it. That’s coming and will be an integral part of our planning for the new Dubai World Central airport. Dubai becomes more and more a popular tourist destination. Many tourists upon departure have to leave their hotels at noon. Our idea would be that the customer has the possibility to either check-in for their flight and drop their bags either at the hotel or go to a city check-in terminal. That means the passenger just takes the metro or a taxi out to the airport in the evening and proceeds directly into the boarding area for his flight.”