Here’s another use case for blockchain – baggage tracking

On December 16, 2022, I was supposed to fly from London to Cairo via Munich for an IEEE event in Alexandria, but I never got there. My flight from London Heathrow to Munich was canceled at the last minute by Lufthansa due to bad weather in Germany and everything went sideways from there.

As anyone who follows me on social media is aware, I was unable to retrieve my checked baggage after my flight was canceled on December 16th, and I didn’t get it back until January 9th. Luckily I had an Apple Tag in my bag so I could follow its journey as I went through mine.

Here’s the play-by-play of what happened.

• December 16: I checked in at Heathrow T2; the flight was cancelled, and Lufthansa did not return checked baggage.
• December 17: I returned to T2 and tried to collect my luggage by calling the “baggage phone” outside arrivals, but no one would answer. I went up to departures and stood in line at the Lufthansa ticket counter for NINE HOURS to rebook my flight. Lufthansa puts me on British Airways (BA) flights to Cairo via Athens the next day.

• December 18: I went to Heathrow T5 bright and early to catch my BA flight. I got to the gate, the flight to Athens was badly delayed. There was no chance of catching the connection to Cairo, BA confirmed that my bag was not going to make it onto the flight to Athens and I can see that my bag is still in T2 from the Apple Tag. If I miss my flight to Cairo, I can’t make it to the conference in time, so I officially canceled my trip. I went to T2 luggage storage to fight for my luggage, but the handlers won’t help me because the bag is one floor below in storage. Later that day I got an email from Lufthansa that my bag was going to Cairo on a BA flight the following morning and I could see my bag moving from T2 to T5 from the Apple Tag. I called BA and they stopped the bag from flying and told me they would send it to my home.

• December 19: I got another email from Lufthansa telling me that my bag was going to Cairo on a BA flight the next day. I repeat the process again. I call BA, and BA stops the bag from flying, but it stays in T5.
• December 19-24: I made many phone calls to both BA and Lufthansa baggage lines. BA told me to chase the bag through Lufthansa. Lufthansa told me they have zero information.
• January 2: Apple branding shows the bag moving to T1, Heathrow’s abandoned terminal.
• January 4: Apple branding shows the bag moving back to T2.
• 5th January: After two separate phone calls to the Lufthansa baggage helpline, I am assured that during both calls, if I go to Heathrow with ID, I will be able to claim my bag using the Apple Tag as a guide. I arrived at T2 and the Lufthansa baggage handlers would not help as my luggage was one floor below in a storage area and they had no staff available to help me get it.

• 5.-6. January: I complain everywhere – online and over the phone – I can think of!
• January 7: I received an email from Lufthansa that my bag had been handed over to a courier service.
• January 8: Apple branding shows the bag moving from T2 to another location, two miles from Heathrow.
• January 9: The text from the courier finally arrives – my bag is out for delivery. It arrived six hours later.

It took me three weeks and three days to receive a bag that never left Heathrow airport. Why did this happen? It’s a perfect storm. Let’s look at all parties involved.

Heathrow Airport is overwhelmed with holiday travel and has yet to staff up since the COVID-related layoffs. Lufthansa, a German airline, has been hit by very bad weather in Germany at the peak of the busy holiday season. British Airways has a “technical fault” during the peak of the busy holiday season. Global Baggage Solutions, the UK baggage handling company that Lufthansa and dozens of other airlines outsource, is going on strike. The list of parties involved and potential points of failure just goes on.

So how can updated technology help prevent perfect storms like this from occurring?

Here is a list of all the parties potentially involved in delayed or lost baggage:

1. the departure and arrival airports
2. the airline(s)
3. the baggage handlers
4. the couriers
5. insurance company
6. regulatory bodies such as the Civil Aviation Authority
7. Apple Tag/Tracking Device

All of these parties create, share or need passenger data in one way or another. I spent a lot of my time over the last three plus weeks correcting one party or another on inaccurate or delayed data they had regarding my location, flights I took or didn’t take, and even the whereabouts of my bag real time. BA told me my bag was in Cairo at one point, for example, but I knew it wasn’t there because of my Apple Tag data. The tracking interface I had access to from the courier company was poor, it wasn’t real time and the information was barebones at that. Instead, I watched my Apple Tag data like a hawk until my bag finally arrived.

Imagine if the courier data was as accurate as my Apple Tag data. Imagine if I was proactively notified of my bag’s journey as it moved from one party and location to another. Imagine if each of these parties were held accountable versus blaming each other for the delay. Imagine if there were incentives for each party to do their job quickly instead of just responding to the constant complainers like I did.

“There is not a strong enough incentive for them to do it right. There is a general lack of accountability because it is very difficult to know who is responsible at each step,” pointed out Joe Holles de Peyer, CEO and co-founder of Gate2Chain, to me during a conversation we had about my luggage nightmare.

I gave Joe a buzz because I know he and the Gate2Chain team have insight into how blockchain technology can superpower the travel industry, including airport baggage.

Joe provided fascinating information on how digital twinning and using a single, global ledger to store data can upgrade our baggage experience at airports.

“If you had a proper system where digital twins were created for the luggage, ideally for each piece of luggage, it’s quick and cheap and it’s easy to do. The luggage will preferably have an RFID tag in it or something, they can either be built into the luggage, or they can have them in little tags that they put on the luggage for you, he said.

“If the luggage had its RFID tag, if there were sensors in every place – the track it’s on, the conveyor belt, the storage room – and every person handling it had an identifier, then you and the various parties involved could know exactly where it is in every moment, and who is in charge, he said.

Joe pointed out that we use 20th century technology to deliver 21st century expectations when it comes to airport baggage. Indeed, the same is true of the internet in general, and it is at the root of so many of society’s problems.

“If they had a single ledger that everyone shared and recorded the information on, then every step of the process is perfectly recorded, then accountability is always clear,” he explained.

In addition to having a single universal ledger to record and access the baggage data (with permission, of course), Joe said there must also be clear incentives attached to it. The key here is to combine the information of the simple database storage system and add value to it with a simple smart contract where you can include an insurance policy, airline miles or a flight upgrade that is automatically paid out after a certain time. passed.

“Basically, it’s about coordinating the different companies – the baggage handling company, the airport, the different companies involved in this – to share this common system database on BSV, the only blockchain that scales,” Joe told me.

Everyone wins in a situation like this. Consumers like me are happy because the service is better. All the companies involved are happy because they have clarity about who is doing it right, where the mistakes are happening, where the blockages are and where the costs are incurred.

“It’s having that perfect visibility for every step of the journey. And when you have that, it just changes everything because there’s light, there’s accountability, there’s responsibility,” Joe said.

The good news is that experiences like I just had with my bag will soon be a thing of the past. The technology is already here to make the whole baggage process much smoother and we have amazing minds like Joe and the Gate2Chain team working on solutions that will deliver the 21st century expectations we all have.

See: Building on Blockchain: Common Challenges and Tools to Make It Easier

width=”560″ height=”315″ frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen=”allowfullscreen”>

New to Bitcoin? Check out CoinGeeks Bitcoin for beginners section, the ultimate resource guide for learning more about Bitcoin – as originally envisioned by Satoshi Nakamoto – and blockchain.