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British Airways Set To Bring Luggage Tags Into the 21st Century
Zothecula writes "Most people would probably agree that air travel still has plenty of room for improvement, particularly when it comes to actually checking in and getting on the plane. For its part, British Airways is now taking steps to speed up the whole process on its end and is even testing a digital alternative to the traditional paper luggage tag. The airline recently produced an electronic luggage tag that travelers can update themselves with a smartphone and re-use over and over."
how long until we're tagged by RFID tats, earrings, piercings, etc. just like baggage?
LOOKS LIKE MEAT'S back on the menu, BOYS!
The millions they waste on redesigning a perfectly functional luggage tagging system could be used to feed millions of fatsos bacon. A sad waste of an opportunity.
The idea is to further move the burden of travel on to the passenger.
I fly BA a bit, 56 flights with them this year. I check a bag on almost all of them. There's rarely a queue. The current baggage tags work wonders, there's a secondary sticker in case the main one gets ripped off, and it has your name on it which is handy when checking you've got the right one at the carrousel.
I arrive at the airport, walk to the desk, drop my bag off, shove my passport over and smile. They give me a nice boarding card (which is often for a seat some rows in front of where I'd selected), put a label on my bag and send it off into the depths of the airport, issue me with a lounge invite (at some airports), and it gives me an opportunity to ask where the lounge is, as many airports I only visit once every couple of years.
It's simple, quick and cheap. If my bag does for some reason arrive at Baku airport instead of Changi, I'm confident they'll be able to read the tag and return it whence it came.
The company is hoping that upgrading to a high-tech version will shave a few minutes off the check-in process and get people to their flights faster.
No, they want to reduce the number of staff since their disastrous merger with Iberia.
Saving 2 minutes will make diddly squat when you've still got conformance at t-35, and close of bag drop at t-40.