Alaska Airlines becomes first U.S. airline to launch electronic bag tag program | Hacker News Reader

Alaska Airlines becomes first U.S. airline to launch electronic bag tag program

news.alaskaair.com

26 pointsbookofjoe18 comments

A ton of speedup in the bag checking process could be obtained by upgrading the kiosks for a snappier and simpler UI/UX.

-Swipe credit or frequent flyer card

[WAIT]

-Enter the airport identifier you are going to

[WAIT WHILE I PULL OUT MY PHONE TO LOOK UP AIRPORT IDENTIFIER]

[WAIT WHILE COMPUTER THINKS ON THIS]

-Is this your flight?

[WAIT]

-Do you want to choose seats?

[If you haven't done this online, hoo boy are you in for five minutes of frustration]

-Do you want to check bags?

[WAIT]

-Are you active duty military?

[WAIT]

-Can you confirm that you have removed all lithium-ion batteries from your checked luggage?

[WAIT]

-Federal law prohibits the following long list of dangerous items. Can you confirm that you have none of these?

[WAIT]

-How many bags do you want to check?

[WAIT]

[God help you if you have a nonstandard item here, eg skis+boots, which the airline will only charge you for one bag for, but will require two baggage tickets]

-Printing your bag tags.

[VERY LONG WAIT]

[20% CHANCE THE PRINTER SHITS THE BED]

-Please affix the tags to your bags in a way that makes perfect sense only if you do this frequently

[NON-FREQUENT FLYERS ADD 5 MINUTES TRYING TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO AFFIX THE TAG TO THE LUGGAGE]

[LONG WAIT TO HAND BAG TO EMPLOYEE]

Employee: You did it wrong, do it again.

I fly United a lot, maybe people on other airlines have more hope

I was excited to hear about this, with visions of having my luggage tracked though each terminal and stop like an AirTag and reducing the change of loss or delay.

Alas, the main benefit is that you don't have to print out a luggage tag at the airport. You still have to wait in line to hand your luggage to someone so they can check if it obeys the checked requirements.

My luggage already seems to be tracked like that on Delta (I get updates per plane and multiple updates within the airport), and this confirms my recollection that it's a fairly old feature: https://news.delta.com/delta-introduces-innovative-baggage-t...

https://news.delta.com/iata-follows-deltas-lead-rfid-bag-tag...

Bummer. If true that basically nullifies the entire benefit of this. The tag printing part is less than 5% of the time spent by each person while they stand at the counter. Though I guess if eventually everyone did this the savings might start to add up to something minimally significant.

As sibling comment noted, bag tracking via RFID already exists. Getting rid of that incredibly annoying long line everyone has to wait in to check bags, however, would be a real innovation.

Alaska is claiming that travelers can save up to 40% off of check in time at the airport with this method, so I guess time will tell if that claim is true.

I wish airlines would partner with apple and add AirTag beacons throughout bag processing lifecycles.

> You still have to wait in line to hand your luggage to someone so they can check if it obeys the checked requirements.

Wow, where I'm from you can check it yourself, and we still use paper tags. There's minimal queues, usually none, at the automatic check in so you save lots of time.

From the article:

> In March, we launched a new self-bag drop system at San Jose International Airport, where guests can save up to a little more than four minutes.

It's clearly designed to be used in combination with the above.

They have those in Amsterdam. The machine prints a label that takes you 5 seconds to put around your bag.

Qantas has been using them on its domestic network for some years. Either you print bag tags at the kiosk that are scanned by the automated bag drop, or if you have the Q Bag Tags[1] and have checked in online, you just proceed directly to bag drop.

[1] https://www.qantas.com/au/en/travel-info/baggage/permanent-b...

While I like them for obvious reasons, I've heard nothing more then hate on them from people around me. Every person had the same complaint that now the moment your suitcase is even the slightest bit oversized/overweight there is no sweet talking the (usually) female person behind the desk to accept it anymore.

Personally, these people overpack suitcases so often that I don't feel it is a problem. There's a limit for the people that have to carry it, it should be illegal to overpack it the slightest.

I just flew Southwest Airlines and the bag checking process is so good. They have a dozen self-service terminals where you scan you passport, inform the amount of bags checked and it prints the tag. The whole process lasts no more than a minute.

It's crazy to me that this is the first US airline to get such a thing. The Australian airline QANTAS has had this since 2011. Not just that, but you walk in to the terminal, check yourself in on a machine, tell the machine if you want a printed tag or have an electronic tag, then go sling your bag into a pod that has a conveyor + scale in the bottom, a bunch of laser scanners and a tag reader. The bag is weighed and checked in quickly, and at no point do you need to see a counter person to check in.

The main airport I use has about 20 of the scanners, and they also have been running well for 10+ years. There are other, larger airports with more of them.

Your luggage is tracked end to end.

See deploying it would cost money and that cuts into the airlines' profits

Perhaps upfront, but reducing headcount due to automation of their workload saves more in the long run.

That's long term thinking. We don't do that here in the US. Short term only, baby!

Electronic tags have been around for a long time elsewhere in the world. Qantas Q tags have been around since 2011, for example.

It appears this is a computer, you can buy at some point:

"Mileage Plan members will have the option to purchase the devices early next year. "

"The activation is done by simply touching the phone used for check-in to the electronic bag tag, which has an antenna that powers and reads the information transmitted from the phone. The e-paper bag tag’s screen will then display the guest’s flight information. "

If IATA made a standard for the it'd be worth it. Lots of airlines have done pilots but they aren't intercompatible so kind of a waste unless you always fly one airline

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