Finding Fault With Qantas' RFID Baggage Tracking System

lukehopewell1 writes "Australian airline giant Qantas has implemented new baggage tags powered by RFID technology. The RFID tag is encoded with the information on a passenger's boarding pass when placed in a bag drop area, and is summarily sent to its destination. But is it any good? ZDNet Australia tested the new systems and found that the system sadly had no intention of sending our cargo."

luggage

[kaoshin]

So they use jars for luggage down under? That's not a bag, mate.

Know issues...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a known issue with many of the first generation of the tags.

The new tags that are being sent out now do not have this problem.

Welcome to 6 month old news...

longest article ever?

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy shit, that's a tremendously long article. Who approved this news again?

Works fine

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a ridiculous story. I use it all the time. It's the best thing yet.
1. Tag Qantas card on post to check-in
2. Flight details and seat number is sent to me in an SMS.
3. Put BAG on conveyor, tag Qantas card, press yes and no on screen.
4. All Done.

Maybe the story is, baggage scale at Qantas does not check items weighing under 1kg or some other threshold?

Re:TL;DL

[AK Marc]

The airline employee couldn't get the airline system to accept the airline tag. Not just "three goes" but "every time tried" and just gave up. It's not like it worked the third time, but the airline employee admitted failure of the tagging system when it wouldn't work. It's not like it was done by a regular person who didn't get it to work. The people trained and paid to make the system work were unable to do so.

I wonder if it may have been because it was such a small bag and the bag didn't raise the tag high enough to be accurately read in the initial scan. Unfortunately, since they have the "automated" system run by airline employees, the guys trying couldn't get a chance to play with it at all to test anything like that themselves.