The Second Research Institute of the Civil Aviation Administration of China, Civil Aviation Chengdu Logistics Technology Co., Ltd
Song Hongqing, Chen Yu, Li Silin
Abstract: In order to comprehensively improve the level of informatization of civil aviation passengers' checked baggage and solve the high incidence of miscarriage, missed, lost, damaged and other situations of checked baggage, the Civil Aviation Administration of China recently issued a series of standards for the "Civil Aviation Passenger Baggage Whole Process Tracking System Part 1~3". This paper mainly puts forward the planning and design schemes of different modes for airports (groups) with different passenger throughput scales, and compares and analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of different construction modes, so as to create a more convenient, better and smarter baggage transportation service system while saving construction funds.
Keywords: passenger luggage, whole process tracking, comparative analysis, planning and design, construction mode
Airport flight flow, passenger flow and baggage flow are the three main processes of civil airport operation, and the smooth flow of airport baggage directly affects the normality of flights and the travel experience of passengers. For a long time in the past, the informatization and digitalization level of baggage check-in in the whole industry was low, which made baggage services lack effective supervision means, and passengers repeatedly experienced poor baggage problems when actually traveling by air.
In 2019, China's civil aviation launched the special action of "construction of baggage whole process tracking system", and airports (Class I. airports) with a passenger throughput of 10 million have basically completed the airport end of the baggage whole process tracking system. According to the planning requirements of the Civil Aviation Administration, the next step will be to carry out the construction of airports with a throughput of less than 10 million (Class II and Class III airports). Based on this, based on the author's planning, design and construction experience, the investment, operation and maintenance, airport positioning and development of airports (groups) with different passenger throughput scales are comprehensively considered, and the planning and design of the baggage tracking system based on different passenger throughput airport scales is proposed, which can provide a reference for the construction of the airport (group) baggage tracking system.
I. Development and current situation of air passenger baggage transportation
Air baggage transportation has long suffered from stubborn problems such as low efficiency and high error rate, and the quality of baggage transportation services has been criticized by the outside world, and the number of passenger complaints remains high. Among the domestic air transport consumer complaints, baggage service ranks in the top three. Taking baggage miscarriage as an example (see Figure 1), in 2019, there were 25.4 million pieces of miscarriage worldwide, with a miscarriage rate of about 5/1000 and an annual economic loss of about US$2.4 billion, accounting for 6.25% of the total profit of the entire industry. The main reason is that the error rate and missed rate of baggage transportation are high, and passengers arrive at the destination airport and find that their luggage cannot arrive at the same time, which affects the subsequent itinerary and the experience is not good.
Figure 1: Global passenger traffic and baggage miscarriage trend chart from 2007~2020
In view of the high incidence of miscarriage, missed, lost and damaged checked baggage, the Civil Aviation Administration of China has repeatedly required the construction of a baggage tracking system in recent years to further improve the quality of civil aviation services, build a "Chinese service" brand, and let passengers have more sense of true service. In November 2020, the Notice of the Bureau of Invention [2020] No. 2644 on Accelerating the Construction of the Airport End of the Whole Process Tracking System for Passenger Baggage at Tens of Millions of Airports with Special emphasis on baggage tracking and information monitoring, requiring airports with a passenger throughput of more than 10 million in 2019 to collect all basic nodes of baggage tracking mainly using RFID technology by the end of 2021 [2].
In January 2022, the Notice of the Bureau of Invention Electric [2022] No. 231 on the Construction of the Baggage Whole Process Tracking System proposed that airports below 10 million levels should start the construction of the passenger baggage whole process tracking system project as soon as possible, and complete the project construction work by the end of 2023 [3]. In February 2023, the Civil Aviation Administration of China issued a series of standards for the "Civil Aviation Passenger Baggage Whole Process Tracking System Part 1~3", aiming to comprehensively improve the level of informatization of civil aviation passengers' checked baggage, create a baggage transportation service system with strong protection, people's satisfaction and strong competitiveness, and effectively enhance the people's sense of gain in air travel[4].
2. Introduction to the process of baggage tracking system
The baggage whole process tracking system mainly relies on radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, and deploys identification equipment in nodes such as "check-in, security check, sorting, early arrival storage, loading/boxing, outbound transportation, loading, unloading, arrival transportation, transit, arrival, and pickup", and the identified and collected baggage information will be stored at the airport end of the baggage whole process tracking system, as shown in Figure 2. The airport is like an "intelligent brain" that collects and classifies complex data, monitors the status of baggage in real time, improves the recognition rate of automatic sorting system, improves the accuracy of baggage shipment, and reduces the occurrence of misloading and missed baggage loading.
Figure 2: Flow chart of the baggage tracking system
The country's transport airports are mainly divided into three categories, Class I is a large and medium-sized hub airport, Class II is a small hub airport, and Class III is a non-hub airport [4].
According to the specification, it is recommended to choose different basic nodes and optional nodes for different types of transport airports:
Class I (large and medium-sized hub airports) should collect 7 basic nodes: check-in, security check, sorting, loading/boxing, loading, transit, and arrival; Airports can choose five selectable nodes according to their own conditions: storage, outbound transportation, unloading, inbound transportation, and pick-up.
Class II (small hub airport) should collect 6 basic nodes: check-in, security check, sorting, loading/boxing, loading, and arrival; Airports can choose 6 selectable nodes according to their own conditions: storage, outbound transportation, unloading, inbound transportation, transit, and pickup.
Class III (non-hub airports) should collect 3 basic nodes: check-in, loading/box or loading (at least one), arrival. Airports can choose 9 selectable nodes according to their own conditions: security check, sorting, storage, loading/boxing, outbound transportation, unloading, inbound transportation, transit, and pick-up [4].
Third, the construction mode analysis of the whole process tracking system of baggage
1. Airport construction model of class I (large and medium-sized hub) airports
Large and medium-sized hub airports usually build separate airport terminals due to high passenger throughput, many links of baggage business guarantee, complex baggage handling systems, and many nodes that need to be tracked. By the end of 2022, the construction of the airport baggage tracking system with a passenger throughput of more than 10 million in 2019 has been basically completed. The airport side of the baggage whole process tracking system is mainly responsible for collecting, processing and transmitting the data of passengers' checked baggage in the airport, realizing the one-to-one correspondence of passengers, flights and baggage, uploading data to the civil aviation public information platform and civil aviation supervision platform in a standard format, and obtaining baggage tracking information from the platform end to realize the business guarantee of baggage, such as baggage picking, registration, pulling down, early warning alarm, extraction and verification and other basic functions, and at the same time providing this baggage tracking data service to airlines, passengers and other third parties. The traffic direction of Class I (large and medium-sized hubs) airports is shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3: Schematic diagram of the flow of traffic at Class I (medium to large hubs) airports
The airport-side network architecture equipment of large and medium-sized hub airports is mainly divided into two parts, field equipment and computer room equipment (as shown in Figure 4). Field equipment mainly includes front-end acquisition equipment, such as RFID identification equipment, photo identification equipment, laser identification equipment, etc., and exchange equipment for field acquisition equipment. This paper mainly discusses the traditional IT physical hardware resources required by the airport to facilitate the comparison of investment in various construction modes. Common IT resources, such as core switches, background servers (usually including application servers, interface servers, database servers, picture servers, etc.), for airports with high storage requirements, usually consider fiber switches, disk arrays and other devices to store data separately, and the entire network architecture is usually designed according to high reliability.
Figure 4: Airport-side network architecture for Class I (medium to large hub) airports
2. Airport terminal construction model of Class II (small hub) airports
Compared with Class I airports (large and medium-sized hub airports), Class II airports (small hub airports) have an annual passenger throughput of more than 10 million in terms of throughput (considering the passenger throughput in 2019), and the passenger throughput of Class II airports is between 2 million and 10 million [2], and the passenger throughput of Class II airports spans a large range; In terms of construction nodes, Class II airports (small hub airports) have six basic nodes for check-in, security check, sorting, loading/boxing, loading, and arrival, which are less "transit" nodes than Class I (large and medium-sized hub airports); However, compared with Class III (non-hub airport), there are 3 more basic nodes of construction.
Based on the above analysis, it is recommended that when small airport hub airports build a baggage whole process tracking system, the passenger throughput is close to 10 million reference large and medium-sized hub airports, when the construction funds are sufficient and the future passenger throughput increase is large, the construction mode of the baggage whole process tracking system is recommended to refer to the construction of chapter 3 large and medium-sized hub airports, that is, the schematic diagram of the data flow of Class I (large and medium-sized hubs) airports in Figure 3 and the airport network architecture reference diagram of Class I (large and medium-sized hubs) airports in Figure 4.
For the airport-side construction architecture of small airports with a passenger throughput of about 2 million, it is recommended to refer to the airport-side architecture planning of the airport group. For the network architecture of small hub airports, you can also refer to the airport network architecture reference diagram of Class II (small hub) airports in Figure 5, that is, reduce the redundant investment of IT equipment and reduce the establishment of separate storage devices.
Figure 5: Airport-side network architecture reference diagram for Class I (small hub) airports
3. Airport Group's airport-end construction model
Considering that Class III (non-hub airport) airports have a small baggage handling capacity and the baggage handling business process is relatively simple, in order to reduce investment and save costs, the author suggests that a single airport should not build an airport end, but build an airport end in an airport group manner, so as to facilitate unified management and unified scheduling of the group. Airport collectivization is roughly divided into three types: SAAS (Software as a Service) type, SAAS + data integration type, and third-party data hosting SAAS type, which are discussed below.
Figure 6: Schematic diagram of the airport terminal system architecture of the airport group
(1) SAAS-type construction mode
When the airport group is mainly based on the construction of small hub airports and non-hub airports, it is recommended to consider the unified construction of airport terminals by airport groups, and the system mechanism is shown in Figure 6 to provide SAAS services for small hub airports and non-hub airports, and the SAAS-type data flow of airport groups is shown in Figure 7. The advantages of this construction model: (1) The group system platform is independently planned and operated independently, and the group controls the baggage tracking data of all airports under its jurisdiction, which is convenient for subsequent intelligent transformation and secondary mining of data; (2) Promote the construction of the entire project from the group level, which can better build hardware and software interface standards for baggage tracking, and facilitate later maintenance; (3) Compared with the airport-side network architecture of Class I (large and medium-sized hub) airports, the SAAS-type network architecture of the airport group shown in Figure 8 can save the investment in hardware and airport software such as IT equipment for the computer room of small hub airports and non-hub airports. Disadvantages: Relying on the airport side of the airport group, the airport group system downtime may have an impact on the baggage tracking service support service connected to the airport.
Figure 7: Schematic diagram of SAAS-type data flow of the airport group
Figure 8: SAAS-type network architecture of the airport group
(2) SAAS+ data integration construction model
When the airport group mainly focuses on the construction of small hub airports and non-hub airports, and also needs to consider the airport end that has been completed to access large and medium-sized hub airports, it is recommended to consider the airport group to build the airport end in a unified manner, uniformly provide SAAS services for small airport hub airports and non-hub airports, and uniformly access the baggage tracking data of the airport end of large and medium-sized hub airports, and the airport side of the airport group only provides data exchange, query, display and other functions for large and medium-sized hub airports. No specific business services are provided (for airports with large and medium-sized hub airports, due to the large amount of baggage and the large amount of baggage business protection, it is recommended not to rely on the airport group to provide business services for baggage protection, and have this capability at the local airport end). The airport group SAAS+ data integration data flow direction is shown in Figure 9.
Figure 9: Schematic diagram of SAAS+ data integration data flow of airport group
Compared with the SAAS construction model, the advantages of this construction model: while providing SAAS services for small hub airports and non-hub airports, it can also integrate the baggage tracking data of large and medium-sized hub airports, which is convenient to form a complete baggage tracking data of the airport group. THE DISADVANTAGES ARE THE SAME AS THE SAAS CONSTRUCTION MODEL. The SAAS+ data integration network architecture of Airport Group is shown in Figure 10, which has the same advantages and disadvantages as the SAAS network architecture of Airport Group.
Figure 10: Airport Group SAAS+ data integration network architecture
(3) THIRD-PARTY DATA HOSTING SAAS-TYPE CONSTRUCTION MODEL
THIRD-PARTY DATA HOSTING SAAS MAINLY RELIES ON THE DATA CENTER PLATFORM BUILT BY A THIRD PARTY TO PROVIDE SAAS SERVICES FOR SMALL HUB AIRPORTS AND NON-HUB AIRPORTS, AND THE FLOW OF THIRD-PARTY DATA HOSTING SAAS DATA IS SHOWN IN FIGURE 11. The third-party escrow platform provides business guarantee services, such as baggage pull-down, registration, abnormal situation handling, etc.; The established airport-side data can also be connected to the third-party data hosting platform, which provides data exchange services between the airports under the group. Advantages: (1) greatly save investment and construction funds; (2) No need for professional operation and maintenance personnel; (3) Technical support is guaranteed to avoid corresponding operation and maintenance risks. Cons: Hosted O&M fees. At present, the domestic third-party data hosting platform has representative units such as the Second Institute of Civil Aviation.
Figure 11: THIRD-PARTY DATA HOSTING SAAS DATA FLOW DIAGRAM
IV. Conclusion
Smart airport is an airport with comprehensive Internet of production factors, data sharing, efficient collaboration and intelligent operation. The baggage tracking system is based on open data sharing, solves the pain points such as miscarriage and missing transportation in the current baggage transportation process, greatly reduces the bad experience of passengers, further realizes the intelligent operation of the airport and its development needs to improve quality and efficiency, gives full play to the role of the airport in data collection and sharing, realizes the open sharing of the system and data to relevant subjects in the industry, and builds a digital, networked and full-coverage baggage tracking system for the whole industry, which is very necessary for the strategic development of the airport (group). It is also the development need of smart airports.
Up to now, the airport end of the baggage tracking system for airports with a passenger throughput of more than 10 million in 2019 has basically been completed, and in the next step, airports with domestic passenger throughput of less than 10 million (Class II and Class III airports) will start the construction of the baggage tracking system. It is expected that soon, a "one network" for tracking the whole process of China's civil aviation baggage will be built with "extensive coverage, efficiency and smoothness".