Lufthansa Partners SITA to Digitally Automate Baggage Re-Flight Operations

Dark/Light Mode (15/03/23)  Lufthansa has joined forces with SITA to explore ways of improving the passenger experience by digitally automating baggage re-flight operations, thereby also reducing mishandled baggage costs.

Whilst much better today than it once was, mishandled baggage between two flight connections is a major pain point for the industry, costing it billions of dollars each year.

The ability to address the issue of staff shortages and baggage mishandling is of paramount importance post-pandemic. Aviation lost around 2.3 million jobs during COVID while recording US$2.2 billion in the cost of mishandled baggage in 2022 – including over 4 million bags mishandled during transfer.

Baggage being manually loaded onto a plane. Picture by Steven Howard of TravelNewsAsia.com

“At Lufthansa, we have always looked at ways to optimize baggage management processes and improve the passenger journey. We see great potential in the automation of today’s mainly manual reflighting processes. This is why we have decided to work with SITA to explore possibilities to digitalize the process,” said Viktoria Rudo, Senior Manager, Lufthansa Group. “Based on the first results of our Proof of Concept, we believe to be able to automatically reflight as much as 70% of Lufthansa´s mishandled bags at Munich Airport. Interpolating this to our global network, we expect more up-to-date information and further improvements in the mishandled baggage processes for Lufthansa and high potential for other SITA airline customers by digitalizing what was previously a totally manual process.”

SITA’s WorldTracer Auto Reflight is a digital solution that does not require any human intervention, reducing cost and inconvenience while contributing to industry efforts towards sustainability and CO2 net-zero targets.

The solution also notifies passengers on arrival of any delay with their bag, while collecting delivery details and ultimately allowing the passenger to bypass the baggage hall.

The solution automatically suggests suitable flight routing for rush bags (baggage not accompanying a passenger) and uses the original bag tag to reflight and inform the baggage system of the new routing. Time is saved, and paper consumption is reduced, because there is no need to issue additional rush tags.

SITA estimates that widespread automation of reflighting baggage could save the industry US$30 million a year in costs associated with mishandled baggage.

Sergio Colella, SITA President for Europe, said, “SITA’s automated baggage reflighting solution is built on the back of past successful co-innovations with Lufthansa and meets a critical industry baggage management requirement as we see the return to the skies. Our aim to make sure that when a bag is mishandled, it is reunited with its owner as soon and simply as possible.”

See also: Lost Bags and Airline Baggage Tracking - HD Video Interview with Peter Drummond, SITA.

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