Up Yours

ABSTRACT

The present paper discusses factors that affect performances of the baggage-claim facility (BCF) and proposes five criteria to evaluate the performances. A systematic approach to evaluate the performances of different BCFs is developed, and the effects of those identified factors on the performances are analyzed and verified based on the observed data. The conclusions are valuable to airport operators and airlines for improving their baggage-claim services. First, a more uniform passenger arrival pattern and an earlier baggage arrival will improve BCF performances, which is influenced by the design of the arrival passenger baggage handling system, the walk distance from the arrival gate to the claim area, and required processes between these two locations. Secondly, though a larger facility may achieve the same performance in terms of congestion levels, it might have inferior time-related performances and need further investigations.

INTRODUCTION

The problem of passenger baggage handling (PBH) has become apparent since the introduction of wide-body passenger airplanes in the early 1970's, which generates lots of passengers and baggage in a short time period. This problem becomes more noticeable when the peak volume is getting larger at some hub airports. For example, the four-time delay of the opening of the Denver International Airport and the chaos emerged at the new operation of the Hong Kong International Airport are both due largely to the bad performance of the PBH system. While the PBH system involves a series of procedures conducted by airlines and ground handling parties at the airport, baggage-claim is considered the most important one due to its visibility to passengers. In fact, the performance of the baggage-claim facility (BCF) dramatically affects the passenger's images toward the airport and even the city/country in which the airport is located. According to a recent survey conducted in Taiwan, the performance of BCF is also on the top of airlines' concerns, compared with other items listed in the survey questionnaire, ranging from airfield facilities to landside facilities (1).

Interestingly, few efforts have been made specifically on the performance measures of the BCF. Most of the available literature includes the BCF as a component of its research that focuses on the operations of the entire airport and only measures the waiting time passengers incurred in the claim area (2-5). The works conducted by Browne et. al. (6) and Ghobrial et. al. (7) were among those limited efforts that focused on the BCF.

The present research applies the queuing concept to evaluate performances of the BCF at airports based on some pre-defined criteria. In addition, it intends to investigate factors that affect those performances. The following section discusses the specifics of the BCF and defines the criteria of performance evaluation. The third section contains the methodology of this research, including the application of the queuing concept to evaluate the defined criteria. The survey design to obtain empirical data and the evaluation results are discussed in the fourth section. The last section concludes this paper with empirical implications and some further research topics.

performances of the baggage-claim facility

Factors that Affect BCF Performances

As indicated in Figure 1, the BCF is part of the airport (arrival) PBH system that includes unloading baggage from the airplane, transporting through vehicles, sorting, and conveying to the BCF. To evaluate the performance of different BCFs at the same airport, it is reasonable to assume that other parts of the PBH system perform equally well for different BCFs. Therefore, factors that affect BCF performances can be categorized into two groups: BCF characteristics and demand patterns. BCF characteristics include type, frontage length, cycle time, and throughput rate. In general the BCF may have three different shapes: linear, carousel, and racetrack (8) and the feeding system can be remote or direct (7). As reported by Ghobrial et. al. (7), the direct feed system performs better than the remote one. The frontage length decides the maximum space of the facility that can be used to display baggage for passengers to retrieve. The cycle time determines how fast the baggage moves around the facility and the time for a passenger to retrieve his/her baggage in case of being unable to catch the present baggage, assuming that the passenger does not chase baggage. The combined effect of frontage length and cycle time determines the volume of baggage presented to passengers for retrieving at a specific time interval. The