Rerouting the Baggage Journey: From Fragmentation to Integration

Introduction

With global passenger volumes continuing to rise, forecast to reach over 12 billion by 2030, an increase of 22% from 2025, airports face increasing operational pressures across every stage of the passenger journey. While significant investment has been made to streamline passenger processing through the integration of biometrics and automation, the systems responsible for the handling, scanning, and tracking of baggage are being pushed to their limits. The management of baggage is no longer solely an operational task; it is a complex, end-to-end process spanning multiple stakeholders.

Fragmentation and Lack of Ownership

The baggage journey is not owned by a single stakeholder; rather, it is shared across a range of stakeholders, including airports, airlines, ground handlers, security authorities, and technology providers. As a result, responsibilities are divided by function rather than by the overall outcome.

Airports provide the backbone and infrastructure; airlines are responsible for baggage check-in, tagging, and reconciliation; ground handlers, like Swissport and Menzies Aviation, manage the loading and unloading of bags onto aircraft, the transportation of baggage between aircraft and terminals, and the handling of transfer baggage. Security authorities like the TSA are responsible for enforcing regulatory standards, screening hold baggage, and approving technologies, while technology vendors including

Due to this lack of ownership, accountability gaps emerge. If a bag is delayed or lost during the journey, it is often difficult to pinpoint where the failure occurred. Did ground staff mishandle the bag, was it delayed in the system, or held in screening? Responsibility for baggage management is shared, but not clearly assigned.

Rising Passenger Volumes and Operational Pressures

As passenger volumes are forecast to reach unprecedented levels, the number of bags moving through airports is rising in parallel. This growth places increased pressure across the core areas of the baggage journey, most notably screening, handling, and tracking.

With the increasing number of bags that need to be screened, systems can quickly become bottlenecked as volumes rise. Baggage handling infrastructure has finite capacity, as does the associated human resources, and feels the impact of this strain, further increasing the likelihood of delays or baggage misrouting. Also, maintaining accurate real-time tracking becomes increasingly complex as the number of bags and hand-offs increase.

Given the nature of the baggage journey, heightened pressure – and any issue arising – in one area can create ripple effects across the entire system, increasing the risk of delays, mishandled, or lost baggage. This is evidenced by the fact that approximately million bags were lost globally in 2024, a slight improvement from the 36.7 million bags that were lost in 2023; potentially signifying that newer processes and solutions are indeed reducing the number of lost and mishandled bags globally.

While lost and mishandled baggage is a worldwide challenge, it remains a noticeably large challenge in Europe, with 10.6 million being recorded as lost in 2023 alone, but down significantly from 2022 which saw 15.7 million being lost, although this large number could be accredited to the hangover from COVID and a lack of staff, poor recruiting and lost experience.

Legacy Infrastructure Constraints

Many of the limitations witnessed in the baggage journey today are driven by legacy infrastructure constraints. As passenger volumes continue to rise, many existing solutions were not designed to accommodate today’s peak surges or long-term growth. Many existing baggage handling systems (BHS) around the world simply do not have the capacity to process, move, and store the number of bags currently in circulation.

Alongside this, the challenge of physical space constraints remains significant. Terminal expansion requires major disruption or reconstruction of existing operations, and many airports cannot undertake such large-scale projects, further constraining capacity. However, in regions like Asia Pacific and Middle East, these physical constraints are typically less present, with more space for expansion and generally more modern, newer airports that are built for purpose and tend to have fewer issues when compared to older, legacy European airports.

Additionally, the lack of flexibility and technology incompatibility of legacy systems makes it difficult to upgrade components in isolation without disrupting operations, while modern solutions such as AI and machine learning are often not compatible with older systems.

Ultimately, legacy baggage infrastructure is constrained by outdated design principles. Limited capacity, lack of flexibility, and physical space restrictions make it increasingly difficult for stakeholders to adapt to rising passenger volumes and evolving operational .

While infrastructure constrains remain at large, there are a number of significant investment programmes with new airports and terminals being constructed, funding for the modernisation of back-end equipment and infrastructure. All hope is yet to be lost, the handling of baggage is improving and will continue to improve with the introduction of modern handling, scanning and tracking solutions, and our report will address these points and assess the outlook and value of the market as stakeholders continue to address lingering issues from the past, and look to futureproof operations moving forward.

How Can Stakeholders Address These Challenges?

Perhaps the question every stakeholder is asking today, from airports to airlines, ground handlers to hardware vendors, is how these challenges can be addressed and how processes can be accelerated. Valour Consultancy’s inaugural report, “The Baggage Journey 2025 – The Future of Baggage Screening, Handling and Tracking Solutions”, aims to provide a detailed assessment of the technologies, market dynamics, and operational considerations shaping the future of baggage-related solutions.

The report will include:

Market sizing, value, spend and five-year forecasts
Detailed analysis of emerging baggage handling, screening, and tracking technologies
Assessments of pain points across stakeholder groups
Evaluation of deployment trends by region, airport capacity, and technology type
Which regions and types of airports will lead the way in the deployment of modern solutions?
Strategic outlook on how the baggage journey will evolve over the next five years

A key part of the research process involves engaging with stakeholders across the baggage journey ecosystem to ensure the report reflects the most relevant commercial, operational, and strategic challenges.

Through participation, stakeholders will have the opportunity to influence the scope of the report, receive discounted pricing upon procurement, and be invited to post-publication activities such as webinars and Q&As.

If this is of interest, please schedule a time to discuss the report in more detail by reaching out to me directly via email: shubh.karbhari@valourconsultancy.com.

Shubh Karbhari, Market Research Analyst

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Rerouting the Baggage Journey: From Fragmentation to Integration

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“The new report on aircraft seating and in-seat power systems provides a very comprehensive market and industry landscape information – the first of its kind containing that level of detail.”

“The Future of Aircraft Seating and In-Seat Power report came at a pivotal time for us as we look to the future of our in-flight offering. It has helped shape our internal strategies and highlighted areas we need to dig into more deeply. Valour has become a trusted resource and partner.”

“The Future of Aircraft Seating and In-Seat Power report came at a pivotal time for us as we look to the future of our in-flight offering. It has helped shape our internal strategies and highlighted areas we need to dig into more deeply. Valour has become a trusted resource and partner.”

“Valour’s maritime connectivity report provides the most comprehensive, detailed understanding of the market, with clear independent insights into the market trends and inhibitors. We use this report as the bible for our business strategy and marketing on what is happening in the industry.”

“Valour Consultancy’s report on The Future of Body Worn Cameras and Systems is well written, detailed and an excellent insight into the key markets. The analysis of the global law enforcement market was extensive and provided us with valuable industry information of this evolving market.”

“In a global market as dynamic as in-flight connectivity, Valour has established itself as a reliable source of market intelligence and insightful analysis. The team is responsive to requests and clearly engaged in improving an already impressive product.”

“The team around Valour Consultancy equips us with the value-added intelligence needed to make well-informed business decisions in a very dynamic market. The passion and knowledge of the team make it a real pleasure to work with them.”

“Astronics is using Valour Consultancy’s 2016 in-flight connectivity report extensively. We’ve found it highly useful in our long-range planning and it has aided in our market research.”

“The Valour Consultancy report on in-flight connectivity provides very detailed insights on the market and it constitutes a very useful tool for the marketing and strategy team at SITAONAIR. The Valour Consultancy team is also very friendly and we enjoy our working relationship with them.”

“Valour Consultancy has provided an incredibly thorough perspective on the in-flight connectivity space, offering insight into drivers of the current and future state of the quickly growing category.”