What Constitutes An Airline Baggage Tag?

A vacation trip to your most desired place or a business meeting overseas, airline journey can be both tiring and exciting. We sit down in our seats and off the place goes to the place we desire. But amidst all this, where is your luggage? The luggage you arrive with is placed at the back of the plane so that your travel experience is less clumsy and comfortable.

Technology is attaining heights every passing day, and the long looped sticker that you couldn’t wait to rip off from your baggage has changed its shape and size while holding a lot of information in just a simple tag. The Automated baggage tag (ABT) first came into use in the early 1990s, following that this humble but strong ABT can withstand anything that comes its way, be it harsh weather conditions or rough handling. Now, it is much more than just a piece of paper.

Features of the ABT

Well-Designed Strip:

PrintedAirline Luggage Tag, when attached properly to the bag, withstands the hardships as it stumbles through the complex baggage system. The ABT is made up of a complex mixture of plastic and silicon which gives it the ability to resist cold, heat, sunlight and much more.

The ABTs are unique as they are pretty easy to attach with the baggage but tough to detach easily. If you need to remove the sticker from the bag, you need to grab the loop from inside and to use two hands, gently pull apart the sticker and remove it. The adhesive is so designed that it doesn’t leave any residue.

Information On The Tag:

The information carried by the tag helps the aviation operations run smoothly while using the printed thermal ticket system. The information fed to the tag helps the staff to sort and track luggage when moving to and from different airports all across the world.

Bag Tags Are Of Different Type:

A normal bag tag comes with the passenger’s name along with flight details and destination which is read from bottom to up. However, there are certain pieces of information that are not visible to the passenger. The tag carries a 13 digit long number from which only the first ten are visible.

The first four digits of the same are airline specific and are known as the Baggage tag Issuer Code. The following six digits are a just rolling number that had started from the beginning when the whole series started getting used. The last three digits that aren’t printed on the tag represent the number of bags remaining in the queue.

This feature prevents the bags from getting lost during transportation. The Barcode is printed twice on the tag with offset by 90 degrees which makes it possible to be read by either the automatic scanners or the handheld scanners. There is an extra protection called the removable stubs which bear the copy of the barcode and are placed in the bag to prevent theft or misplacement.