SITA and Middle East Airlines–Air Liban (MEA) have moved Beirut-Rafic Hariri International Airport's baggage reconciliation system (BRS) to the cloud.
The move, part of a renewed technology contract, will help reduce operational costs for the airport and airline, with the serverless design meaning there is no longer a need for on-site interventions to refresh, upgrade, maintain, and support multiple obsolete devices.
By installing SITA’s Bag Manager cloud solution, the airport will be able to process around nine million bags per year compared to three million bags in previous years, without making any significant equipment investment.
The cloud-based technology solution will be pivotal in reducing the number of mishandled bags and supporting quick repatriation of mishandled ones. SITA Bag Manager tracks every bag loaded onto an aircraft, a unit load device, or a cart. It scans and evaluates the characteristics of each bag against the flight parameters to ensure bags are loaded onto the right aircraft.
Dr Adib Charif, head of IT at MEA, said: "SITA has been the provider of BRS at Beirut-Rafic Hariri International Airport since 2009, and we're excited to continue our technology partnership with this next stage of our digitisation programme. By moving a server-based system to the cloud, we've cut down on cumbersome operation procedures, eliminated regular maintenance costs, and freed up resources to focus on other essential services."
MEA is the flag carrier of Lebanon and responsible for 40% of the traffic at the airport. Middle East Airline Ground Handing (MEAG, a subsidiary of MEA) handles 80% of the baggage processing at the airport, with the remaining 20% handled by Lebanese Air Transport, which also uses SITA's cloud based BRS.
Image: SITA
