Sky Assist
Fast and Secure Baggage Handling
With the BagAssist suite, it is now possible to simplify daily work, improve staff productivity and flexibility and, at the same time, raise quality standards in the lost and found baggage and baggage control areas.
For many years, Lost & Found and Baggage Control Departments have been viewed as end-of-chain, cost centres only in the Air Transportation process. Because of this, technology that traces and handles airline passenger baggage has evolved little over the last decade.
It is, however, intensely frustrating for a passenger at the end of their journey, to queue alongside other angry and frustrated passengers, eventually to meet a Lost & Found agent only to be handed a piece of paper with some hand written numbers. Whatever good feeling the passenger had about their travel experience evaporates in seconds at this point.
The provision of ground handling services has changed over the years. Traditionally, airlines performed baggage services themselves through one of their departments. While this situation still exists and indeed some airlines still provide these services for other airlines, more and more airline baggage services are contracted out to independent handling companies. These companies have basically only two differentiates when it comes to competing for business, price and delivered service quality.
The BagAssist suite of products allows ground handlers and / or airlines to differentiate themselves from their competitors by raising overall service quality standards to gain a clear competition advantage in the marketplace.
There is a global basic baggage tracing system in use called WorldTracer™ from SITA. WorldTracer, however, requires extensive agent training: as much as two weeks for basic agent training, and another two weeks for management training. Cost and time often prevent baggage agents from attending training sessions, and knowledge of this non-intuitive and complex old-fashioned legacy system has dramatically decreased. It is now mainly restricted to WorldTracer coordinators and a few supervisors only.
The BagAssist suite of software was designed to change all that by getting bags to passengers, faster and with greater security. Users of BagAssist are delighted by its simplicity of use and by how its automated functions and intuitive graphical user interface cuts down training time for the agents. The short training time allows the use of interim agents during peak periods. In line with Sky Assist policy, the users can also uniquely influence the direction of BagAssist through their active presence at the product User Conference and its result in the yearly release. They can also ensure that BagAssist meets current business and industry needs. BagAssist product strategy is to address market needs and deliver enhancements and new functionality quickly.
BagAssist has date syntax validation, verification of mandatory fields, help tips and warning messages, virtually anticipating and eliminating human errors before sending the information to WorldTracer. The airline information pages increase operational efficiency, and by having data available on-line agents are always up-to-date with any changes or special restrictions they need to be aware of, making training and integration of new agents much easier.
Even though not a customer of SITA, Sky Assist is also listed in the SITA WorldTracer communication channel database. This ensures that all basic changes made to WorldTracer are incorporated into the BagAssist product suite and that the BagAssist customer community stays aligned with the latest industry wide tracing requirements.
The BagAssist suite of products brings a new level of quality and productivity for airport ground handlers and airlines that ground handle themselves. All the necessary output documents for the passenger are professionally produced in a dynamic way, as are baggage labels and documents for delivery companies. New innovations in BagAssist will ensure that by the end of 2005, passengers in a hurry are able to stop queuing and make their baggage declarations themselves at the airport on a dedicated PC based on all required restrictions and following a few intuitive screens.
The BagAssist suite has been currently deployed for several years at various customers and airports: Swissport in Zürich, Geneva and Balse, Flightcare and Virgin Express in Brussels, Jet Aviation in Geneva and Zürich, Aéroports de Paris (ADP) in Roissy and Orly, Groundforce in Portuguese airports and even TUI Airlines Belgium for the web-based SITA emulation only at any worldwide location through an internet connection.
In July 2005 Groundforce, born out of the Portuguese Handling Company - which has over 60 years experience in ground handling - has also selected BagAssist and BagAutorush for use in Portuguese airports. This strategic choice will help support Groundforce build a professional and high quality service for its handled airlines and strengthen its market leading position.
BAGASSIST: LOST BAGGAGE SYSTEM
BagAssist is meant for use by airport staff from the lost baggage department. It is a state-of-the-art web application that optimises the agent and department productivity, as well as the service to the passenger and the handled airline. Its features include:
- Integrated with industry solution from SITA (WorldTracer™) for finding lost baggage worldwide
- Produces all required outputs such as passenger and staff documents, baggage labels, telex messages, itineraries, BSM
- Integrated with flight information, handling contracts, delivery agreements
- Integrated with an IVR (Interactive Voice Response) system to follow up the baggage status anytime, anywhere.
BAGAUTORUSH: BAGGAGE CONTROL SYSTEM
BagAutorush is designed to handle mis-routed baggage in a fast and effective way, by checking if the bag can still be loaded on the passenger flight. If not, an automated rushing procedure is started, producing all necessary messages and baggage labels in order to forward the bag in the fastest way to its final destination. Used by the airport staff of a baggage control department, it is a state-of-the-art web application that maximises the timely loading of misroute baggage and optimises the agent and department productivity. Key features include:
- Bar code scanning and licence plate recognition
- Integrated with DCS and/or airport database for passenger status and automatic flight selection when passenger flight departed
- Integrated with industry solution from Sita (WorldTracer) for rushing baggage not loaded on time;
- Printing of baggage labels.
PAXCLAIMS: PASSENGER AND BAGGAGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
PaxClaims is another web based automated system available within Sky Assist for the claims management of a Customer Relations department of an airline. The primary objectives that were followed are the same as for the BagAssist suite of products: a smart and up-to-date graphical interface for the users to be comfortable to work with and, in order to lower the IT implementation and maintenance costs, introducing process automation and operational system integration to improve staff productivity and enable preparation of professional and flexible reports for the management. Other advantages include:
- State-of-the-art, web-based interactive passenger and baggage claims management system
- Customer and claim centric, with all communication stored at claim level and claim treatment based on passenger profile
- Automatic proration for baggage
- Interactive links with flight operational, Frequent Flyer data, WorldTracer and airline web site.
- Enables automatic conversion of claim data and topics related paragraph into standardised answer for passengers in their language.
All our solutions are available in an ASP licence model based on usage, and can be accessed for a certain testing period through a normal internet connection any time, anywhere. Do not hesitate to ask for your test user ID and the procedure to connect.
| Contact Details | |
 |
Mr. Luc Trentels |
| Director | |
| T: +32 2 723 38 01 | |
| F: +32 2 723 38 09 | |
| E: luc.trentels@skyassist.com | |
| W: www.skyassist.com | |