Work

Baggage-Claim-as-a-Service: A Per-Party Reclaim System for Inbound Logistics in Smart Airports

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: Airports handle the final stage of the arriving passenger’s journey at the baggage claim hall, one of the least instrumented terminal operations. At most airports, arriving bags are discharged onto a shared recirculating carousel, a passive, first-come process that lengthens passenger waiting, congests the claim hall, and gives operators no per-party measure of service. This paper formalizes inbound claim as a measurable, controllable terminal service, termed Baggage-Claim-as-a-Service (BCaaS), in which the passenger party rather than the individual bag is the unit of service and the complete bag set is delivered against an observable delivery-time target. The paradigm is evaluated through a per-party, cluster-based reclaim architecture that consolidates each party’s bags, routes the cluster through a multi-level sortation network, releases the complete set at an authenticated collection point, and records per-party telemetry for service monitoring. Using a discrete-event simulation calibrated to King Khalid International Airport Terminal 5 and benchmarked against a conventional carousel across 27 scenarios, per-party reclaim reduces availability-based passenger, cluster, and flight delivery times by 38%, 51%, and 27% on average, largest under light load. The results show that per-party reclaim makes inbound terminal logistics observable and supports operator service-level monitoring, more sustainable urban mobility, and future field validation.

Source: Systems

DOI: 10.3390/systems14091095