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RFID - Alive and kicking after all

Travel and security stakeholders are currently revisiting their strategy to cope with a lasting transportation market slowdown. RFID aficionados are no exception. Jean Salomon and Michel Banâtre recall how and why IATA and the transportation community acknowledged that adopting universal RFID for bag tags did not bring the desired global benefits to the entire stakeholder community. And, following a straight review of the peaks and troughs of the RF saga in the transportation industry, they document an approach whereby specific, independent RF applications could profitably operate in a closed loop, increase operational security and deliver improved passenger service.  It all started nicely...
Air transportation was the first historical beneficiary of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology: during WWII, allied pilots derived a useful extension to the nascent radar technology when RFID was first introduced in the UK through the IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) application distinguishing friendly from hostile aircraft radar blips. The first report on the potential use of RFID was described in a 1948 paper by Harry Stockman as "communication by means of reflecting power" set up the onset of a long series of developments in contactless technologies, the most recent being the anticipated growth of Near Field Communications (NFC) applications. However, sixty years later, many acknowledge that some of the RF fruits we were collectively hoping to reap in the transportation industry were not hanging that low! No wonder, therefore, that many of the original scenarios and some RF-based illusions vanished as air transportation progressively dived into recession....................................

Swine Flu: the latest impediment to one stop security by Philip Baum

For all our deliberations about enhancing passenger facilitation at airports and reducing the need for multiple checks by numerous government agencies, our best efforts are often stymied by the realities of trying to operate in the most global of all global industries. Aviation, by its very nature, brings together the best and the worst, the most confident and the most vulnerable, and the wealthiest and the poorest of society and places them, in close proximity to each other, in a single aluminium tube miles above the planet's surface. Whilst we aim to cater for the business traveller and the tourist, the sportsman and the academic, we have to face the fact that we also transport criminals, deportees, anti-social drunkards, victims of human trafficking, psychologically disturbed individuals and those for whom air travel can transport them from destitution to the comparative lap of luxury. Other modes of transport have to contend with similar challenges, but usually only one at a time.

Add to the mix the current economic crisis and the picture is far from rosy and the glamorous image of the industry a distant memory. It is the norm that the media is criticised for enhancing the general public's fear and many will make accusations that the media takes pleasure in fuelling a crisis. This is easily said when concern is high yet deaths are few in number, but most health professionals will attest to the fact that many of the world's killer diseases have either been eradicated or controlled through highly effective, well-oiled media campaigns, whereby the education of the masses has been the key element.................................................