Any person who's experienced the frustration of having a piece of luggage delayed or lost by an airline wonders the same thing: "How hard can it be to read a bag tag?" The answer might be found in a four-letter word – acronym to be exact – that could make lost luggage a thing of the past. It's called RFID. The technology has been around for quite some time. So what's the hold up?

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags are small enough to be inserted into various objects, like luggage ID labels. When they are within a few feet of an antenna, the tags emit radio signals that are then read and matched with a person's data. Major airports around the world are testing (or have tested) RFID technology. These include Amsterdam, London and Paris in Europe; Atlanta, Denver and Los Angeles in the USA; and Beijing, Hong Kong, Narita, and six Korean airports in Asia. United airlines has recently announced a test of RFID technology in order to reduce check-in time for its most frequent flyers.

In 2005, IATA, the policy-making body representing over 200 airlines worldwide, ratified a standard for the use of RFID in baggage management. Airlines and airports are weighing the costs of this technology against the benefits. Basically, there has to be enough of a cost to losing and delaying baggage to make such an investment pay off. According to IATA, each baggage mishandling costs an airline an average of US$90. IATA predicts that the costs of implementing RFID will outweigh the savings in only the first year of implementation. This translates to an industry-wide savings of US$700 million per year once fully implemented. The price per tag (currently around 20 cents) will surely go down as more tags are used by the industry.

Why haven't barcode tags worked as well as we'd hoped? Quite simply, the barcode tags require line-of-sight to be scanned properly. Scanners can misread or fail to read a tag, especially if the tags are wet, creased or blocked. With RFID, a tag has to be within a given proximity of the receiving device without the line-of-sight requirement. RFID baggage tag read rates average 95-99 per cent, while barcode read rates average 80-90 per cent. Though the advantages of RFID are clear, full implementation has been slower than expected. Should customers eventually pay for this technology? Given the recent climate of airline fees for just about everything, such news wouldn't come as a surprise. For an airline, it all depends on the nature of their operation, their current cost of mishandling luggage, the cost of the RFID tags and scanners; and their satisfaction with the current barcode system.

We seldom realize that only 2 per cent of luggage is mishandled. Even so, luggage delays and losses have increased due to tighter airport security measures and airport congestion. One impact of the weakened passenger demand has been a slightly improved baggage performance among the largest airlines. However, if it's your bag that's missing, no statistic will matter. What will matter is a global standardization of RFID technology that can be implemented sooner than later.

Whilst the debate of airlines using RFID technology is ongoing, IAPA has a range of services to help assist you should you ever lose your luggage. IAPA Bag-Guard® Tags Protect your luggage with IAPA's unique Bag-Guard® identification tags and should your checked in luggage become lost you simply notify the airline, then one call to your IAPA Membership Office will initiate a search via the airline's transportation system. We will then help track down your luggage and arrange to have it returned it to you. IAPA Bag-Guard® Insurance for members resident outside of USA, Canada and Colombia. Travel Guard Insurance for members resident in the USA and Canada.