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Comment by jerlam | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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!

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.

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...

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.

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

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