RFID takes off at U.S. airports

Nov 1, 2006 12:00 PM, By Merrill Douglas

Airline industry hopes to slash costs associated with missing luggage

The test will include luggage on Asiana and Korean Air flights bound for Incheon International Airport near Seoul, South Korea. Asiana already has started testing RFID at six South Korean airports, including Incheon. At some point, San Francisco International plans to execute a memorandum of understanding with Incheon and the two airlines, so the airlines can track a bag's movements from the moment a passenger checks it in until it reaches the baggage-claim area at the other end.

San Francisco International could eventually expand the test to include other airlines that operate in the section of the terminal where it's deploying the system, Alley said. Hong Kong International Airport also has an active RFID program, so an airline that flies between San Francisco and Hong Kong would be a natural choice for further implementation, he said, adding that “IATA would function as the intermediary,” doing the recruiting and coordination.

Boston's Logan International Airport also has RFID testing in the works, although it's only in the early planning stages, said Dennis Treece, director of corporate security at the Massachusetts Port Authority (MassPort). MassPort officials are considering two kinds of RFID technology: the traditional sort that uses chips in the baggage tags, and a chipless system developed by Inkode Corp.

Chip-based systems pose a problem because of their costs, Treece said. “A penny each would be nice. But it costs 30 (cents) to 50 (cents) each.” If more accurate tracking improves efficiency, the savings that result could bring a return on investment, “but unless we run a study, we can't show what those cost savings might be,” he said.

While operational efficiency is the main motive for implementing RFID at Logan, better baggage tracking also could have security implications, Treece said. “A bag that is positively identified all through the system, from a security standpoint, is a very good thing. When you have a bag that is suddenly unidentifiable, you have to wonder, where did it come from?”

Inkode's technology would embed metal particles into the paper when a baggage tag is manufactured, creating a unique pattern in each tag, said Mark Smithers, vice president and chief operating officer of Boston Engineering, an Inkode licensee. When an Inkode reader transmits a radio signal, it detects that pattern in much the same way that a radar beam detects objects in its path.

“It takes a lot of filtering and [digital signal processing] work, but that's the basic technology,” he said.

Smithers said the chipless RFID technology provides more accurate reads in airports compared to chip-based systems. “It's not susceptible to the environment of static electricity and gamma rays. The tests they've done so far trying to implement RFID at the airports have failed miserably because of these,” he said.

Logan officials are keeping an open mind regarding technologies that might be deployed. “We don't have any favorites here,” Treece said. “If it's a promising piece of technology, we'll put it through its paces,” as long as it meets MassPort's other requirements, such as legality and customer acceptance.

Legal considerations and customer acceptance also will play a major role in whether MassPort decides to apply RFID in another context — on passengers' boarding passes. “That would be the next step,” assuming it's possible to read the ID at a sufficient distance, Treece said.