THOUGH baggage management and real-time tracking of baggage is the key to any successful air travel operation, dissatisfaction is high in baggage management at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport (HSIA) while no suggestion and initiatives are enough to speed up the lethargic process. Quoting Civil Aviation Minister AKM Shajahan Kamal, a national daily on Wednesday reported that the Minister is aggrieved with the performance of HSIA and the national flag carrier Biman and pledged to replace the old staff by the new.
When major airports are moving to a hassle-free system with world-class facilities like automated baggage collection and tracking, seamless boarding using face recognition and biometrics and paperless travel, we are operating our airports inefficiently and continue to showcase ours inability to the world. The airport management should be automated and hassle-free and for that, the government should focus on the service with no delay.
In a pre-budget discussion, the Minister said Biman is the pride of Bangladesh and we should work to keep Biman’s image intact so that no one can criticize the national airliner for poor service. The Minister said the Director (Flight Operations) of Biman had sought two months to improve the luggage handling at HSIA, but the situation remained unchanged.
We congratulate the Minister for his simple statement about his failure, which is rare in this country. Meanwhile, the official said the national flag carrier is doing well in delivering services as it earned Tk 606 crore in profits for the last three consecutive years. The official is hopeful of optimizing the carrier’s service after the arrival of four Boeing Dreamliner aircraft by 2019.
Over the next 10 years, the number of air travelers is expected to cross 6.5 billion from 4 billion currently. But thanks to cutting-edge technology that is being developed – and already being deployed at select international airports – airlines are gradually cutting down on the incidence of baggage mishandling. Earlier this year, Aeroflot became the first airline in Russia to provide real-time location of all the baggage it handles; it uses SITA’s Bag-Journey System for end-to-end tracking. We recognize that baggage is an important item for passengers, and through this solution, we will be able to provide them with more certainty about where their bags are at every step of the journey.
The government should get in sync with the world trends with regard to modernization and automation of the airports. The gateway of the country should be hassle-free and the customer service should be given priority by the Civil Aviation Authority.
