Sita, the air transport industry’s IT provider, has announced that it has signed a partnership agreement with Alstef Group, an established baggage handling specialist, to launch Swift Drop, a new self-bag drop solution.

Mexico City’s brand new Felipe Ángeles International Airport, opened in late March, has become the first airport globally to install 20 Swift Drop units.

The new solution is claimed to significantly reduce the time required for baggage checks at airports. It allows passengers to print their own bag tags without need for assistance and load their baggage directly onto the accessible conveyor.

Swift Drop, part of Sita’s Smart Path passenger processing portfolio, features an intuitive interface, which enables passengers to swiftly check their bags and evade queues. It comprises Sita’s TS6 Kiosk and Alstef Group’s fully integrated bag processing solution. For airports and airlines, Swift Drop dramatically improves baggage handling from the minute a bag is put on the conveyor belt, identifying overweight and oversized bags in seconds. Advanced camera tag-reading technology ensures baggage will also be processed faster, with an average first-time tag read rate of 95 per cent.

Drew Griffiths, Head of Sita At Airports, said: “In airports globally, our Smart Path passenger solution has delivered faster, automated passenger experiences. The partnership with Alstef Group – leveraging their significant baggage handling portfolio – enriches our end-to-end offering with a reliable self-bag drop solution. This solution has the added benefit of being easily biometrically enabled.”  

Philippe Hamon, Sales Director, Airport Solutions, Alstef Group, said: “Taking the stress out of baggage is fundamental to any passenger’s journey. “Our baggage processing solutions have been successfully implemented in hundreds of airports globally to do exactly that. It is therefore pleasing that we can extend these benefits to the whole passenger journey through our partnership with Sita.” 

Sita Flex-as-a-Service

Meanwhile, the company also announced the launch of Sita Flex-as-a-Service, a next-generation “beyond common-use” platform that allows airlines to provide a completely mobile experience to passengers while enabling the flexibility to rapidly respond to passenger’s changing needs.

With passenger numbers ramping up sharply in many parts of the world, airlines and airports have been hard-pressed to respond quickly. Sita Flex APIs will enable airlines to create new and bespoke passenger processing features and streamline their app development process, allowing them to scale far faster than in the past. Airlines no longer need to undergo lengthy and costly certification through their common-use providers to ensure smooth integration, giving them the freedom to deploy their applications how and when they like.

The speed of deployment was demonstrated in a recent hackathon hosted by Sita and Microsoft where developers were able to build a working application within 24 hours. This means airlines can implement new services such as self-service bag tagging within days.

Building on a long-standing partnership with Microsoft, Sita Flex uses Microsoft Azure, providing users the full benefit of the cloud without the constraints of a traditional common-use environment. Airline staff can now also be completely mobile, untethered from fixed points in the airport such as a check-in counter or kiosk. Agents can use their airline’s applications on a mobile device, anywhere.

This would allow staff to check-in passengers in remote locations or launch agent-roaming services in minutes to manage traffic peaks or irregular operations. Together these benefits offer airlines the tools to better manage rapid changes in the airport without sacrificing the passenger experience. 

“As the air transport industry moves towards a mobile-first passenger experience, we’re excited by the agility and freedom that Sita Flex offers, deploying their applications without needing to first certify changes and therefore reducing costs. For the passenger it means a rich, fluid, and convenient experience, using their mobile phone as a remote control for travel to easily manage things like check in and printing bag tags,” Griffiths said.