Swissport International and SITA have announced the deployment of the world’s first passenger bag-drop solution which allows a single bag-drop counter to be used to service passengers from several airlines in the same queue. The innovation aims to provide a smarter flow in passenger processing.
Ten counters have been created and successfully tested at Zurich Airport to the benefit of eleven airlines, all members of the Star Alliance (Adria Airways, Austrian Airlines, Blue1, bmi, Croatia Airlines, LOT Polish Airlines, Lufthansa, SAS Scandinavian Airlines, Spanair, Swiss International Air Lines and TAP–Portugal) whose host departure control system is recognised by SITA’s new software solution known as PassengerBagdrop. The system eliminates a potential bottleneck in the passenger management process.
PassengerBagdrop also supports passengers who have already checked in online but, for whatever reason, do not have a boarding pass as it can easily re-print the original boarding pass.
“Swissport airline customers will appreciate the significance of this latest development as it will lower costs for airline customers and improve passenger throughput without increasing check-in space," remarked Rico Barandun, head of Swissport’s e-Services.
Bruno Frentzel, SITA senior vice-president for applications solutions, added, “This is a real innovation for a smarter process flow at airports. PassengerBagdrop is an important development in SITA’s Baggage Portfolio. We also intend to innovate further with our PassengerBagdrop Off-Airport. This will be specifically designed for logistics companies to allow them to provide departing airline passengers with basic flight check-in and a secured baggage pick-up from off-airport locations such as hotels.”
With many low-fare airlines seeking to reduce the amount of check-in desks they use at airports, the ability to share bag drop facilities offers a potential solution to this requirement, particularly at smaller destination airports.
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