In the early 1980s, Eastern Air Lines was the first airline to implement barcodes to sort baggage. The early versions were circular barcodes – like a bullseye. What was key was that these represented what we now know as a Licence Plate Number. A unique number for that bag which could be looked up in the sorting system to see where it was to go.
Eastern was also one of the first airlines to take baggage security seriously. On July 1, 1981, a bomb in a suitcase exploded as it was being loaded onto an Eastern flight from Guatemala to Miami killing a baggage worker. The men who checked the bag never boarded the flight. This led to two immediate actions: passengers were reconciled with their baggage before it was loaded onboard and every bag entering the Guatemala Airport was X-rayed.
At the time, the concern was focused on international flights. Eastern developed a manual system using special baggage tags with extra stubs each with the tag number. As bags were loaded in carts or containers, a stub was torn off and affixed to what was called a “bingo sheet”. When passengers boarded their stub was communicated to the baggage loaders who marked that bag as cleared to load.
On June 22, 1985, Air India flight 182, a 747 from Toronto via Montreal to London and India exploded off the coast of Ireland killing 262 people. Once again, a bomb in a suitcase but a no-show passenger.
The airline industry was badly shaken and caught unprepared. Passengers on international and even some domestic flights were required to walk down the jetway stairs to point out their baggage before it could be loaded.
At Eastern, the “bingo sheet” reconciliation system came into its own. In an abundance of caution, Eastern’s senior management decided to also introduce X-raying all international baggage. Eastern was also one of the first to develop a computerised Departure Control System or DCS and a new component was designed to automate the reconciliation process doing away with the labour intensive “upstairs – downstairs” coordination. This is when we started to hear onboard announcements that the flight was delayed removing the baggage of no-show passengers.
The airline industry at large, however, was struggling to deal with the obvious need to reconcile passengers and baggage. IATA, the International Air Transport Association convened an emergency Baggage Security Working Group (BSWG) to overhaul the interline baggage procedures in cooperation with the Airport Council International, ACI, and in line with the changes to ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organisation – a UN body) Annex 17 mandating passenger-baggage reconciliation and other security measures.
Already active in industry standards committees and acknowledging the developments already implemented by Eastern, John Vermilye was appointed Chair of the BSWG.
Working on a tight deadline, the first step was to agree the principles of passenger-baggage reconciliation (PBR). Vermilye worked behind the scenes to modify the existing Eastern barcode system to be capable of global usage and in between airlines (called interline).
Building on the LPN – License Plate Number concept originated at Eastern, Vermilye proposed a ten-digit LPN comprised of:
- a leading digit that could be used optionally by airlines to indicate priority baggage, connecting baggage, etc.
- the three digit IATA accounting code for the airline issuing that bag tag
- six-digit random number
The challenge was how to make this something that could be adopted globally at a time when not all airlines were automated and, apart from Eastern, were not using computers to generate baggage tags. Vermilye researched barcode symbology and identified Interleave 2 of 5 (ITF for short) as ideal to represent the ten digits. Based on his experience with how baggage tags were made in the 1980s he knew that the serial numbers of pre-printed bag tags were made using numbering wheels which would physically advance one digit at a time. He confirmed that ITF would be compatible with the older manual printing process.
The IATA Passenger Service Conference adopted Vermilye’s recommendation to change the baggage tag numbering standard to the LPN and using ITF barcodes. Initially, these were short bar codes added to whatever kind of tag an airline was using to make it faster to reconcile passengers with baggage.
In November 1988, Vermilye was asked to join IATA as head of industry baggage standards and operations. At his first meeting held in Washington in January 1989, now as Secretary and no longer as Chair, Vermilye proposed extending the length of the barcode so that it could be read by automated baggage sorting systems. This was adopted then and there as the new standard. Once again, the work began to codify this into IATA Resolution 740 which defined the details of the new computer-generated tag, with its distinct orthogonal pattern of barcodes printed both vertically and horizontally.
There have now been 100 billion barcode baggage tags printed and used since this new global standard was adopted.
