Using the Baggage Tag of the Future, Qantas graphic

A permanent baggage tag will be a key part of the Qantas Airport of the Future project announced today by its CEO, Alan Joyce.

The concept is that of updating the information in the baggage tracking system in tandem with the chip embedded in the tag each time a Qantas Frequent Flyer member checks the bag to which it is attached.

The baggage tag will work in conjunction with a chip enabled Qantas Frequent Flyer card, which becomes in effect, a permanent boarding pass, activating your current booking when it is ‘read’ at check-in.

The chip enabled cards and baggage tags will be available to all Qantas Frequent Flyers except those at the initial or bronze membership level, however other improvements are being planned as part of the Airport of the Future project for all Qantas customers, even escapees from Tiger.

But will the Airport of the Future really be so uncrowded? Qantas graphic

The cards will become usable for check-in and baggage drops at Perth in the middle of next year, followed by Sydney toward the end of 2010 and Melbourne and the remaining Cityflyer ports in 2011.

Plane Talking has one important suggestion to offer Qantas concerning this idea, and that is to ensure that the baggage cards cannot be cut off by the morons who keep pinching my airline specific tags between drop off and reclaim. I have had Cunard and Singapore Airlines tags knocked off in Qantas terminals and United cards ‘disappeared’ in American Airlines terminals. Petty theft is infantile as well as criminal and could ruin what seems like a very good idea.

Maybe the solution to getting around this is to make the baggage tags ‘proximity cards’ like the London and Hong Kong Octopus cards, which can be read on approaching metro barriers without the need to remove them from a wallet.

Sure, the London Octopussy is not quite perfect in this respect, especially when exiting some services, but the concept of an invisible card buried away from thieving fingers inside the luggage may have merit.