Luggage tracking: A case of identity

Tracking services can help you trace your luggage when it goes astray. Sara Turner reports.

Lost luggage is the curse of business travel. Whether you’ve paid £100 for your ticket or £10,000, all bags have to go through the same system and a host of things can go wrong – they can all too easily get caught in the conveyor belt or simply fall off the back of the luggage van on the way to the aircraft. If your bag misses the plane, the world tracer tag – the large white paper label with a bar code which is put on the handle at check-in – should make sure it follows on behind. The real problem is when that tag becomes separated from your luggage. Without it, your bag is just one more black wheelie case. Of course, if it is labelled with your name and address, this shouldn’t be a problem – the airline will get in touch and get it back to you. If only it were that simple – as most business travellers are aware, although lost luggage usually turns up eventually, getting it back can take perseverance. This is where luggage-tracking companies can help. Adam Dalby, managing director of i-TRAK, says: “Our system is designed to put the finder in touch with the owner within a matter of seconds. That’s half the battle. Once you’ve got that, you might still be in Fiji and your bag in London, but as long as you know where it is and when it will get back to you, you can plan around it. It’s the uncertainty of making a loss report: they say they’ll be in touch, then you don’t hear anything for five days.” With a background in lost-luggage handling for the aviation industry, Dalby speaks from experience. “I’ve been the person with the bags. I know, if I’ve got a bag in front of me with no identification, the first thing I’d do is look to see if there is anything on it that can help me identify the owner? Airports don’t have a lot of storage space. If they see a bright label on it, they’ll send a message and get rid of it.” Like the other products on the market, i-TRAK’s system works on a simple principle – bags are labelled with a tag carrying a unique code, the company’s contact details and instructions for the finder, and the customer’s details are registered on a central database. The i-TRAK tags are durable adhesive labels which stick straight onto the bag. According to Dalby, loose labels that tie around the handle are more vulnerable. “The handle is the weakest part of the luggage. That’s the bit we grab.” If a bag is lost, the finder can get in touch with i-TRAK via the website or using the airlines’ own system. “The airlines communicate about lost luggage via an internal system called Telex and we’ve got a Telex address on all our labels,” explains Dalby. A message is sent to i-TRAK by the baggage agent, quoting the i-TRAK code and providing a reference number. The i-TRAK system automatically reads the i-TRAK code and finds who it belongs to. The owner then gets the message with the reference number, which can be used to tell the airline where their bag is. The system can also come in handy if someone walks off with your bag by mistake. The tag gives instructions for contacting i-TRAK, which will send an email and text to the owner with the finder’s contact details. The i-TRAK travel pack (£9.99, available online at i-trak.com) includes a one-year subscription, two sets of luggage tags and seven “micro” tags, for mobile phones or laptops. And be sure to register your full details online. “Some people don’t bother to register,” says Dalby. “That’s the most frustrating thing. In the last year, I’ve had at least 50 laptops that I could have got back to owners, if they had registered them.” Rival firm BaggagePIN has a slightly different system. Terry McCann, director of operations, explains: “We don’t track bags, we locate the owner. The whole concept was derived around the traveller taking a shared responsibility.” On its website, baggagepin.com, customers have a secure personal profile with their contact details. When you travel you can fill out a section with your destination and accommodation details, so if your bag does get lost while you’re away you can be contacted directly. The company has partnered with Aviance, an alliance of airport-service providers whose agents have direct access to the BaggagePIN database. Aviance’s coverage is currently limited to North America, Europe and parts of Africa, but other baggage handlers or members of the public who find the bag can report it on the website. BaggagePIN also allows the finder to access the owner’s email address so that they can get in touch directly. BaggagePIN’s starter pack costs £6.99 and contains two plastic tags. The price includes one year’s subscription, and activation is simple – just send a text message with the individual code to BaggagePIN. Finally, there is Trace Me (tracemeluggagetracker.com), a company that has partnered with the national-property database, immobilise.com. A one-off payment buys a tag with a code which acts as the identifier. You then register the tag on immobilise.com (which as a Home Office project is free of charge to join) where you enter your personal details. The police in the US and UK have access to Immobilise, and can get in contact with you if your bag is found. This is more useful if your bag has been lost or stolen outside the airport, as police check immobilise.com when an item is brought in. For security reasons, Trace Me doesn’t allow the general public to access customers’ details directly, although baggage handlers can get access by contacting the company. Tags cost £12.50 each and cover you for the life of the tag – you need one per bag and if it breaks, you have to buy a new one. So are these luggage-tracking systems worth it? Obviously, none of them can guarantee that you’ll get your bag back when you want it, but they can help to speed up the process and give you some reassurance that you will eventually be reunited with your luggage. And for less than £20 a year, that has to be worth a try.

The future of tracking

The current system that keeps track of where your bag is when you fly is based on paper tags and bar codes, which although proven to work, does have limitations. If the tag gets wet or ripped, the bar code can’t be read by the scanners. The scanners also need to have a line of sight, so if the bag is at an awkward angle or the tag is trapped beneath it, the bar code is equally unreadable. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is currently being trialled at London Heathrow, with the support of airport operator BAA and Emirates. The system tracks bags at every stage of their journey, using a tiny chip that emits radio waves which scanners don’t need a line of sight to pick up. According to a BAA spokeswoman, the results are encouraging so far: “The technology is doing what we thought it would do.” The chip has the potential to be developed, with higher capacity allowing more information to be stored to create a “bag passport”. I-TRAK is also researching the possibilities of RFID to improve its baggage-tracking system, in collaboration with the University of Surrey. Adam Dalby said: “We’re looking to take the next step forward, basically trying to get a fully automated tracking system. That is the future for lost luggage.”