The second BagAssist User Conference took place in Brussels in April 2005, and was a great success with excellent participation and customer feedback. The Conference welcomed not only existing customers but also potential BagAssist customers that came to have an in-depth look at how the conference was organised and have the unique opportunity of discussing with existing customers how BagAssist was delivering value to their organisations.

SkyAssist, the Belgian provider of advanced software for the air transportation industry, welcomed customer representatives at its second BagAssist User Conference. Attendees included representatives from all users of BagAssist and potential users such as Air France and KLM each sent two representatives in order to exploit the unique opportunity of discussing with existing users the benefits of BagAssist, the way it is implemented and in general, discuss ways of enhancing Lost & Found Baggage area in terms of productivity and professionalism.

As with last year’s conference, day one covered the presentation and finalisation of the new BagAssist release for 2005 that contains all the new functions proposed and validated by the users at the 2004 BagAssist conference; day two included a presentation of the new functions recently requested by users together with a discussion of prioritisation of these for integration into the 2006 release. In line with SkyAssist policy, users can uniquely influence the direction of BagAssist though release management and ensure BagAssist meets current business and industry needs. BagAssist product strategy is to address market needs, and deliver enhancements and new functionality quickly.

BagAssist manages lost and found baggage processes as well as passenger status enquiries and also helps increase ground staff productivity leading to reduced unit costs. BagAssist delivers improved service quality to handled airlines and passengers looking to be reunited with their mishandled baggage.

Every day, thousands of passenger bags are mishandled by the airline industry and their owners want to be reunited with their bags quickly and expect their problems to be addressed as efficiently as possible, whether by airport authorities, ground handlers or airline representatives. To recover passenger loyalty, it is critical that resources work rapidly and in a flexible way, in order to meet passenger demands.

BagAssist, deployable as a web based application, is a great leap forward in the area of mishandled baggage and in addition to increasing ground staff productivity it delivers real-time management information and helps reduce the costs associated with traditional telecommunication networks.

BagAssist, SkyAssist’s vanguard solution is an application that automates processes for the follow-up of lost and found baggage and it is integrated with SITA’s WorldTracer™, the worldwide standard for the tracing and recovery of lost luggage. BagAssist automatically produces all the required documents for both the passenger and the agent and also manages all information relating to flights, handling contracts, delivery agreements, etc…

With its intuitive, interactive and user-friendly interface working from an Internet browser, it is very easy to learn, providing immediate access to a centralized database.

“Thanks to BagAssist, we now offer handling companies, airports and airlines a baggage solution based on their current needs and processes”, explains Luc Trentels, Founder and General Manager of SkyAssist. “Our open systems approach, through the internet, and our philosophy that aims for simplicity and integration, allows our customers to save on the high costs of developing tools themselves and using traditional networks. The ease of use of BagAssist also reduces the learning process for ground staff whilst enabling an immediate increase in productivity. We are confident that these benefits will ensure many other companies in the industry will soon join our customer community.”