An airport terminal building provides all major passenger services, such as ticket sales, passenger check-in, baggage handling, and security. Inside the terminal, airline employees make flight reservations for travelers, issue seat assignments and coordinate aircraft boarding. All services that an airport provides demand a quality work, done correctly and at the right time.
Our study will deal with luggage flow in airports: what are the difficulties that airports face concerning luggage flow? What are the different ways to handle them? After answering these two questions we will see some example over the world of best performing airports, and we will study how the cultural aspects can influence results in the luggage delivery service.
The security in the airports is a very important and serious issue which worried all the countries in the world, especially after the 11 September's terrorist attack. After this date, security controls in airports have increased in a dramatic way.
The main terminals used are the X-ray machines in order to find dangerous materials or metal detectors such as guns, and animals trained to detect explosive materials on a passenger or in a luggage. The personnel in the airports can order to search a person or his luggage in order to look for dangerous material, drugs, guns…. Objects considered like weapons are forbidden as they are a danger for the flight security (products such as lighters, nail clippers, inflammable or explosive materials…).
After the 11 September's terrorist attack, the European Council and Parliament took measures to increase the safety in the airport zones. These measures don't only affect passengers but also employees. They are gathered in the followed regulation.
[...] The main measures taken by this regulation are: - Security in the airports + Personal who works in restricted areas have to surrender to the same controls as passengers + Strict access control in restricted areas and other operation areas, terminals and other public areas + Controls of the personnel, transported objects and of vehicles to prevent the introduction of articles prohibited in the security zones + Physic security guards and patrols - Security in planes + Records of safety controls of the planes + Protection of the planes - Passengers and hand-bags + Passenger is controlled + Individual passenger check + Control of all hand- bags + Control of diplomat (except the diplomatic bags) - Luggage in porters + Control of the baggage in the porter + Protection of the baggage in warehouse This year, other kind of measures, regarding liquid products in cabin luggage, have been taken. [...]
[...] Any problems in one of the tasks can end in a big delay regarding luggage delivery or loss. Furthermore this issue is more than just a quality service for customer, it is also a cost issue that is internal to the company: if an aircraft has to wait to land while luggage is loaded or transferred it might miss its slot, it will have to wait until another slot becomes available. This implies extra costs, luggage delays and losses cost money to airports and airline companies (in USA, luggage process is the responsibility of airlines, whereas foreign airports prefer to take care of luggage themselves) that is the reason why this matter is highly important. [...]
[...] On the way to the plane's porter there are a lot of tapes to transport them with 45 springs where the luggage is unloaded and pushed in the plane. There is a system which tracks baggage and works in the following way: At the entry of the classification line, there is, at the top of this material an ATR high speed lector. When suitcases pass the entry, their passage is followed by a system of optical tracking with photoelectric cells or codifiers. [...]
[...] Picture of RFID labels Coordination systems In order to coordinate informational flows, many systems have been developed by airports to ensure a safe and quick luggage delivery service. The main goal is to use a system that could centralize information and have the ability to track any luggage anywhere. RFID might be the solution? Nowadays, the most used system is the bar code. Lately, the main innovation is the RFID technology (Radio Frequency Identification). This technology, which is an important topic for today's logisticians, is more and more successful and used by airports. [...]
[...] CDG2 airport has dealt with its own luggage problems with the following solutions: In March AIR FRANCE and Airports of Paris put in service a provisional semi automatic system of classification, the TBF sorting out machine), which can treat up to 3.500 suitcases per hour. Its impressive dimensions (up to 2 times a soccer field) allow it to solve the traffic increase problem. In May 2006, the TBR system South, same as TBR North, specialized in short connections, was established, this system is faster than the last and has a classification capacity of suitcases per hour. [...]
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