Royal Jordanian gears up baggage handling systems in preparation for season's tourist boom

Since it began its move to privatisation, Royal Jordanian Airlines has been restructuring its systems to improve customer satisfaction and safety, and increase business efficiencies. The new baggage reconciliation and management system, which is being implemented with the help of IBM's business partner in Jordan, United Business Machines (UBM), automates and streamlines the baggage handling process, reduces errors and allows the airline to deliver a level of service on a par with airports around the world.

The Baggage Reconciliation System (BRS) was developed using the IBM Websphere Studio development environment that allows them to manage baggage handling processes by using wireless hand-held devices for screening baggage at the check-in counters where information on the passenger is captured by the wireless device and transmitted via the Web to the main system. The advanced system brings the airline enormous cost and time benefits by reducing the amount of time spent by its on-ground staff locating baggage and respective owners. Running on an open-standards based platform, the new system runs on IBM xSeries integrated servers using WebSphere Application Server to allow the different data sources to be linked intelligently together.

'Since the company began the privatisation process in 2002, it has had a cultural shift to focus more on business issues, particularly maintaining a high level of customer service. Our goal is to give our customers great service from the moment the ticket is purchased to when each passenger arrives at their destination,' said Ahmad Abul-Ragheb, Executive Assistant Information Technology, at Royal Jordanian. 'We chose WebSphere as it is very robust and based on open standards, allowing us to leverage the power of Web services. This gives us enormous flexibility to add features or tie in other information systems as we increase the sophistication of our operation.'

Royal Jordanian Airlines is a pioneer in information technology in Jordan, where it has been using IBM mainframes since the '80s and has been one of the first companies in the kingdom to have a dedicated information technology department.

'This project has been very exciting for UBM, as it allows us to demonstrate the power and flexibility of Web services in such a demanding environment,' said Ali Rugibani, Marketing Manager at UBM . 'We can now show other organisations around the region how Web services can be used to tie together a wide array of disparate technology systems using open standards. Royal Jordanian has taken an extremely progressive strategy, which will yield enormous benefits in the long term as it grows its information systems.'

Error-free baggage handling is crucial to Royal Jordanian, as it impacts not only the safety of the aircraft, but mis-handled baggage causes frustration for passengers and losses to the airline through compensation payments. The new automated system compliments the existing IATA system, with full integration capabilities between the two systems.

'Any organisation investing in technology today needs to look at four aspects: reliability, flexibility, ease of application development, and the ability to interconnect any information system with any other,' commented Bashar Kilani, Manager of IBM Software Group for Middle East, Egypt and Pakistan. 'Choosing WebSphere means that Royal Jordanian does not need to rewrite applications when it wants to include more mobile computing or Web-based systems into its IT strategy.'

Ultimately the system will allow ground crew to scan luggage anywhere on the apron, and know exactly where it should be loaded without having to returning it to the departure hall. The first phase will cover Queen Alia International Airport and the second phase will extend the system to cover King Hussein International Airport in Aqaba and the city airport at Marka.

'An airport should be a 'zero tolerance zone' for downtime and errors. We have been working with IBM and UBM for two decades because of their proven track record for reliability and professionalism, as well as the legendary reputation for reliability of IBM servers.' said Jamal Saudi, Director of Information Technology at Royal Jordanian. 'UBM not only provides us with round the clock support, but also has a team of developers that are skilled in WebSphere implementations'.