Chapter 7, Problem 2.1VC

Alaska Airlines: 20-Minute Baggage Process—Guaranteed!

Alaska Airlines is unique among the nine major U.S. carriers not only for its extensive flight coverage of remote towns throughout Alaska (it also covers the U.S., Hawaii, and Mexico from its primary hub in Seattle). It is also one of the smallest independent airlines, with 10,300 employees, including 3.000 flight attendants and 1.500 pilots. What makes it really unique, though, is its ability to build state-of-the-art processes, using the latest technology, that yield high customer satisfaction. Indeed, J. D. Power and Associates has ranked Alaska Airlines highest in North America for seven years in a row for customer satisfaction.

Alaska Airlines was the first to sell tickets via the Internet, first to offer Web check-in and print boarding passes online, and first with kiosk check-in. As Wayne Newton. Director of System Operation Control, states, “We are passionate about our processes. If it’s not measured, it’s not managed.”

One of the processes Alaska is most proud of is its baggage handling system. Passengers can check in at kiosks, tag their own bags with bar code stickers, and deliver them to a customer service agent at the carousel, which carries the bags through the vast underground system that eventually delivers the bags to a baggage handler. En route, each bag passes through TSA automated screening and is manually opened or inspected if it appears suspicious. With the help of bar code readers, conveyer belts automatically sort and transfer bags to their location (called a “pier”) at the tarmac level. A baggage handler then loads the bags onto a cart and takes it to the plane for loading by the ramp team waiting inside the cargo hold. There are different procedures for “hot bags” (bags that have less than 30 minutes between transfer) and for “cold bags” (bags with over 60 minutes between plane transfers). Hot bags are delivered directly from one plane to another (called “tail-to-tail”). Cold bags are sent back into the normal conveyer system.

The process continues on the destination side with Alaska’s unique guarantee that customer luggage will be delivered to the terminal’s carousel within 20 minutes of the plane’s arrival at the gate. If not, Alaska grants each passenger a 2,000 frequent-flier mile bonus!

The airline’s use of technology includes bar code scanners to check in the bag when a passenger arrives, and again before it is placed on the cart to the plane. Similarly, on arrival, the time the passenger door opens is electronically noted and bags are again scanned as they are placed on the baggage carousel at the destination tracking this metric means that the “time to carousel” (TTC) deadline is seldom missed. And the process almost guarantees that the lost bag rate approaches zero. On a recent day, only one out of 100 flights missed the TTC mark. The baggage process relies not just on technology, though. There are detailed, documented procedures to ensure that bags hit the 20-minute timeframe. Within one minute of the plane door opening at the gate, baggage handlers must begin the unloading. The first bag must be out of the plane within three minutes of parking the plane. This means the ground crew must be in the proper location with their trucks and ramps in place and ready to go.

Largely because of technology, flying on Alaska Airlines is remarkably reliable—even in the dead of an Alaska winter with only two hours of daylight. 50 mph winds, slippery runways, and low visibility. Alaska Airlines has had the industry’s best on-time performance, with 87% if its flights landing on time.

Discussion Questions*

1. Prepare a flowchart of the process a passenger’s bag follows from kiosk to destination carousel. (See Example 2 in Chapter 6 for a sample flowchart.) Include the exception process for the TSA opening of selected bags.

2. What other processes can an airline examine? Why is each important’?

3. How does the kiosk alter the check-in process?

4. What metrics (quantifiable measures) are needed to track baggage?

5. What is the role of scanners in the baggage process?

*You may wish to view the video that accompanies this case before addressing these questions.