American Airlines has introduced a new baggage alert system that will let passengers know the whereabouts of their bags without them having to wait at the baggage carrousel.
Customer Baggage Notification (CBN), designed to save travellers from the inconvenience of waiting pointlessly for a bag that will never arrive, was created by AA for anyone who has had the unfortunate experience of being the last person at the baggage carrousel, witnessing as everyone else is happily reunited with their bags.
The service will only notify customers whose baggage are not on the same plane as the one they are landing on; it does not notify everyone on the plane.
Customers will be notified if their bag arrives before them, for instance, and will be given the appropriate baggage service office’s address to pick it up.
For luggage that will arrive on a later flight, the Late Baggage Arrival notice does the same. When flying internationally, passengers will be told to go immediately to the baggage service office to get an update on the arrival of their bags rather than unknowingly waiting in the carrousel.
To speed up the procedure and save passengers from stopping at the baggage office at the airport, clients will get a Mobile Baggage Order on their mobile device for domestic flights. This order will ask for delivery information and a description of the bag.
Travelers can also take matters into their own hands by using a portable baggage tracker like Trakdot, a tiny gadget put inside the checked luggage that connects to the user’s smartphone. The gadget will notify the owner through email and SMS when it reaches its destination.
