BAA and Emirates this week announced a six-month, £150,000 trial of a new RFID-based luggage tracking system at London's Heathrow Airport.

The trial will use Motorola XR480 Fixed RFID Readers.

According to CNN, RFID promises a vast improvement over the current barcode-based tracking system. "BAA estimates that Heathrow can read only 60 percent of labels that pass through," the article states. "RFID is reported to offer over 99 percent accuracy."


"At Hong Kong Airport, where the RFID system has been in use since 2005, the number of unreadable tags has fallen from approximately 15 percent of the 38 million bags it processes each year to roughly 3 percent," writes Silicon.com's Nick Heath.

And there's an added bonus. "Departing passengers will be invited by BAA staff to voluntarily register their mobile phone details, which will enable them to receive a text message alert on arrival at Heathrow with details of their baggage re-claim belt," notes ComputerWeekly's John-Paul Kamath.

"With a massive increase in lost luggage claims last year, it's been more and more obvious that a new system was needed," writes Digital Trends' Christopher Nickson. "Let's hope this works."

More here from ITPro ... more here from the NYT ... more here from BBC News ... and Motorola's press release is here.