Back to Air Transport IT Review - Issue 2, September 2010
The baggage conundrum: Star Alliance
By Hock Lye Lee
Vice President, Products & Services
Star Alliance
With 27 airlines in the Star Alliance, the interlining of bags between the carriers is far more complex than if it was just a single airline, so we very much follow the adage of 'what you measure gets done'. Since 2001, we have tracked the individual performance of the carriers using a Baggage Information Repository.
In the years that followed the Star Alliance has nearly doubled its membership from the 14 carriers it had in 2001. That exponentially increased the complexity and gave us a real baggage dilemma. So we made 2007 the 'Year of the Bag' where we focused on improving the handling of interline baggage.
We then shared the performance data with the local staff to enable them to improve their processes. This led to a significant improvement in baggage mishandling rates.
Embedding improvements
Given this successes, we have continued to focus on baggage since by embedding these improvements into normal every day processes. Each month we prepare a key flights report looking at 40 Star Alliance connection points and listing the 20 worst connection points for mishandlings.
We give this to the carriers who pass it onto the station managers. Once they receive a report showing their performance they become motivated to improve it.
Standard procedures
A number of other actions have been taken to improve baggage handling. For example, one of the first things we did was make it a requirement of belonging to the Star Alliance that all carriers must follow a set of standard procedures for transfer baggage.
If you cannot adhere to these rules you cannot become a member. We also have a person appointed as baggage champion in each carrier. These have regular conference calls and face-to-face meetings to swap information and discuss baggage issues.
Another solution that has worked very well is the setting up of Star Connection Centres. These are control hubs just for bags at risk. We have twelve such hubs. When bags are identified as 'at risk' then dedicated personnel are tasked with ensuring they catch the connecting flight. Last year alone we saved €15.5 million.
Real-time Web tool
IT can also be a great help. One tool we use is called a Transfer Decision Tool (TDT). It is a web-based tool that shows in real-time the station managers whether the transfer bags have been loaded onto the connecting flight.
We have also gone a step further and developed with SITA a tool called the Integrated Baggage Transfer System (IBTS), which flags potential baggage mishandlings by monitoring their progress from the arriving flight, through the different airport stages until they get on the connecting flight.
If the bags fail to pass a certain point in a specified time, we can send someone to look for them, based on the position they were last monitored at. This is something we are doing a proof of concept on at the moment with SITA at Heathrow Airport involving all the Star carriers.
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