Star Alliance has announced plans for a number of technology
enhancements, designed to “provide smoother service to the Alliance’s
customers but also reduce infrastructure requirements and handling costs
at all of the 1,300 airports the Alliance is serving today”.
The group is to launch a new IT baggage “hub” for its member carriers
by the end of this year, which will simplify the process,
“significantly reducing the number of baggage issues and providing
faster and more accurate information for our customer service agents”.
The alliance said that “Baggage processes are currently complicated
by the fact that the relevant information resides in many different
systems”, and that “In addition to those operating at the individual
Star Alliance member airlines, each airport is running its own baggage
system, thus making it highly complex to retrieve the current status of
bags, to locate bags within the systems and to take effective remedial
action if bags are mishandled”.
Star Alliance says it will also develop standardised processes for:
- off-airport / self-service check-in
- fast bag drop technology at airports
- baggage self-tagging
- automated travel document validation
Star Alliance will celebrate its 20th anniversary next year
