July 06, 2006
RFID Baggage Handling - Preventing Disasters
Twenty-one years ago last month, Air India flight 182 exploded off the coast of Ireland. It had been the target of political extremists, who had checked in some baggage but not themselves. Human error allowed the baggage to go through on that flight and another to Narita Airport in Japan, where two baggage handlers were also victims. A family friend was on the first plane, a young woman of only 15. Needless to say, a lot of people felt the impact of that situation, whether or not they were of East Indian origin. To prevent such situations from happening again, RFID technology is being employed at a number of airports to track baggage.
Other solutions have been tried, but my own experience is that they were sometimes insufficient and/or inefficient. A little over a year after the disaster, I was offered a programming job at a large Canadian airline, on a new software project designed to prevent similar disasters. But the existing software was too convoluted, and there were ridiculous restrictions on coding practices because, as one executive told me, the veteran programmers would not be able to understand newer code.
I only stayed on a year or so at the company, sick of the politics. I know that the software was eventually implemented, but I didn't envy the programmers that worked on the project.
RFID technology, on the other hand, is an ideal and efficient solution for tracking baggage. Current technology applications are so new that the question of coding differences between veteran and new programmers likely does not exist.
In addition to preventing similar disasters, baggage tracking would reduce the cliched loss of baggage that seems so common with airlines.
Because such an application of RFID requires that personal information be stored, it concerns a lot of people, especially those worried about the violation of civil liberties (myself included). However, as with any software-driven technology, numerous safeguards can be implemented that protect the privacy for the average passenger, but leave a way to check unattended baggage, should the situation arise.
It's not the technology itself that is the real threat, but the way it is applied. The real issue is, will those safeguards be implemented?
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