Delta Airlines is providing a solution for one of the most frequent problems travelers all over the world faces. In order to remedy the problem of lost and mishandled luggage in airports, Delta Airlines incorporated a new technology called the Radio Frequency Identification or the RFID. RFIDs are chips that record luggage information that permits travelers to be able to monitor their luggage using an app. As expressed by Brett Snyder, a blogger for Cranky Flier, to the NBC News "The airlines have been doing better in general when it comes to mishandled bags, but this is going to help significantly."
According to NBC News and NY Times, this kind of technology was already established long ago and has been used by other airlines and airports such as Alaska Airlines, Qantas, Lufthansa airlines and Hong Kong, Las Vegas McCarran airports. RFID chips are also used to track shipments of goods and merchandise. According to Ryan Ghee, the editor of Future Travel Experience website, its quite a wonder how it hasn't been adopted so well to the airline industry yet.
As said by Samuel G. Ingalls, the Assistant Director of Las Vegas' airport, "RFID runs for us day in and day out very, very accurately- 99.5 percent accuracy." The airport has also handled about 160 million bags with RFID chips for the past 10 years. 84 airports in the United States have already incorporated these chips with the hope of having this technology internationally.
Delta is investing $50 million for the application of this technology with equipments such as printers, scanners and radio tags. As RFID is slowly being applied by many, it was said to have decreased the reports of lost luggage. As reported by the Department of Transportation's Air Travel Consumer Report, the cases of mishandled luggage June last year was 3.47 per 1000 passengers while there has been 2.82 per 1000 customers mishandled luggage for the month of June this year.
