Baggage Systems

As an airport operations manager, you're concerned about baggage security and tracking efficiency. Your operation needs to know where each bag is at all times, who it belongs to, and whether loaded bags are matched with a boarded passenger.

ARINC has developed two efficient, integrated baggage systems—BagMatch™ and BagLink™—designed to meet these objectives. These baggage tracking and reconciliation systems use computer-generated tags and readers to track baggage location within the airport, at the gate, and on the plane, and match all loaded bags with passengers.

BagMatch—ARINC's baggage reconciliation and tracking system—uses wireless laser barcode scanners to read printed luggage tags. BagMatch will keep track of every movement of every bag and container in the system. It verifies whether a piece of luggage can be positively matched to a verified, boarded passenger before it's loaded onto a departing aircraft. The interface displays baggage status in real time and allows users to audit information.

ARINC's BagLink enables baggage sorting systems to properly direct baggage to aircraft without delay. BagLink's sophisticated communications server collects baggage-routing messages from multiple airline hosts and distributes the messages to sortation and other airport systems for further processing. BagLink provides the interface between any connected host system and the airport's baggage sortation system and baggage reconciliation system—regardless of which baggage reconciliation system you currently use.

BagLink is highly efficient because it takes full advantage of host lines already in place for passenger departure control and uses MUSE gateways to send and receive baggage messages in standard IATA formats. BagLink has bidirectional traffic capability, so it can support and be integrated with many types of airline host applications.

With ARINC baggage systems, baggage handlers know exactly where each bag is located—down to the position within the container onboard the aircraft. In the event that a bag must be removed from the aircraft before departure, it can quickly be found and identified with 100% accuracy, using wireless scanners connected to the centralized database.