Cutting-edge technology reduces costs, improves the passenger experience and enhances sustainability

An incredible 5.2 billion passengers took to the skies in 2023, flying above the pre-pandemic total of 4.5 billion in 2019. But more passengers mean more mishandled bags – a total of 36 million worldwide last year – even though overall mishandling rates declined.

Mishandling is an expensive headache for airlines. Each mishandled bag costs about US$ 150 according to SITA’s latest research, and this means milllions of dollars disappear from the bottom line per year, globally.

Industry-wide efforts and investments continue to reduce the number of mishandled bags, and we’re likely to see progress year-on-year. But it’s a hard nut to crack, with airport capacity management issues, and surging baggage volumes. And some baggage will always, inevitably, be mishandled. The most common reason for this is during transfer, which accounts for 46% of baggage mishandling, followed by failure to load, at 16%.

When that happens, bags need to be reflighted. The quicker and more efficiently that happens, the lower the costs and the happier affected passengers will be.

It’s astonishing, really, that in the 21st century, that most baggage reflighting still relies on inefficient, expensive, and wasteful manual processes. Reflighting or baggage handling agents today often find themselves using isolated, unconnected systems on separate devices – including desktop and handheld – to manage departure control, baggage handling and reconciliation, and baggage tracing.

Automated reflighting

Here’s the idea: apply new technology to completely automate the reflighting of bags without – or with minimal – human intervention.

That’s what we’re doing with SITA WorldTracer Auto Reflight, a fully automated SaaS solution. With Auto Reflight, bag and passenger details and message flows can be managed autonomously at both departure and arrival stations. The most suitable flight routing to reflight the RUSH bag can also be determined automatically, by consulting flight schedules, customer-defined business rules, and the passenger’s travel and bag status.

When you use Auto Reflight – fully compliant with IATA Resolution 755 – you benefit from automation and algorithms that increase confidence and accuracy. You can manage multi-location baggage from a single point, allowing staff to register baggage and have it reflighted quickly and easily.

Auto Reflight is now in use by major carriers at some of Europe’s busiest airports: Munich International Airport and Zurich Airport where huge quantities of baggage are handled every day. Although the vast majority are handled without any issues at all, those that are mishandled now benefit from Auto Reflight. Over its first year of implementation at Munich airport for Lufthansa Group, the SITA Auto Reflight automation rate grew to cover eight out of ten mishandled bags, without human intervention, and on the original bag tag.

Major airlines could save around US$ 100k annually using Auto Reflight, and widespread automation of reflighting baggage could save the industry US$ 30 million a year.

So how does it work?

Auto Reflight starts with the initial detection of a delayed or mishandled bag. It then automatically identifies potential flights for the RUSH bag and selects the most suitable routing. This is based on pre-configured business rules and customer agreements, such as preferred routes and carriers, load limits, and minimum connect time.

Auto Reflight uses the original bag tag, so manual retagging isn’t needed – making everything more accurate, more sustainable, and less wasteful, without the need for reprinted bag tags or overlays.

Using the new flight data, the airport’s Baggage Handling System automatically directs the bag to the correct flight for loading. The average time to automatically reflight a bag is just two seconds.

Proven, reliable, scalable and efficient

Auto Reflight is unique, with its combination of a SaaS model, end-to-end automation, fault station and reason-for-loss automated coding. It’s a well-proven solution, already deployed for multiple customers under different implementation scenarios. It’s platform-agnostic and works well in any setting – from small airports with manual baggage handling or larger, more advanced, high-tech-equipped facilities. With Auto Reflight, you increase the chances of baggage quickly being repatriated to its owner.

Auto Reflight also contributes to industry sustainability efforts and CO₂ net zero targets. It helps reduce emissions in terms of paper tag production, distribution and waste, as well as emissions linked to human labor and electronic device use. Auto Reflight is also designed to find the optimal direct RUSH bag route, avoiding loading RUSH bags onto multi-leg flights.

A better passenger experience

Passengers want to be informed and in control, before, during and after their journey. As part of WorldTracer, used by 500 airlines and ground handlers at over 2,800 airports globally, Auto Reflight gives you a great opportunity to improve the passenger experience.

As soon as you know a bag’s gone missing, you can inform the passenger automatically,. That way, they don’t have to wait at the carousel in arrivals for baggage that isn’t coming.

When you proactively deliver passenger notifications you can also automatically collect bag delivery details. This allows passengers to bypass the lost baggage claim, and track their bag via an easy-to-use self-service web interface, with 24/7 access. Automated communications can also keep passengers informed by delivering customized messages at every stage of the process, right through to baggage repatriation.

All systems are integrated in a single global aviation-specific solution, with a single shared database. WorldTracer is automatically updated with the RUSH bag information, so Auto Reflight supports the automated repatriation process from end-to-end.

At SITA, our aim is to make sure that when a bag gets mishandled, it’s reunited with its owner as soon and as simply as possible. And when we succeed – with solutions like Auto Reflight – that makes for happier travelers, more efficient airports and reduced costs for airlines.

Find out more information about what savings you could make