Kansai International Airport welcomes tens of millions of passengers every year, but it has developed a system that ensures none of their baggage ever goes missing.
Losing a piece of baggage is always a risk at airports. For example, in the US, data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics shows that domestic flights lose about 3 million bags every year. With hundreds of millions of individual bags to handle, losing some of them seems like an inevitability, and yet, one busy airport in Japan claims to have never lost a piece of baggage in its three decades of operation. Kansai International Airport, which serves the city of Osaka, opened in September 1994, to relieve the overcrowded Osaka International Airport and has been welcoming millions of passengers per year ever since. The staff at Kansai Airport pride themselves on being extremely efficient at handling passenger baggage, so much so that they have never once lost one.
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As Japan’s seventh busiest airport, Kansai International Airport averages 20 – 30 million passengers per year, so its incredible record has nothing to do with it seeing very little traffic. Its secret lies in a very well-set-up system that involves arranging the passengers’ bags in a way that prevents them from getting damaged and also makes them easier to count, not once, but multiple times.
Nikkei Asia documented the baggage handling process at Kansai Airport, in which employees consistently check that the number of bags on arrival matches the number checked in on departure, and then promptly search for the item, either in the plane’s cargo hold or in the screening room. The goal is to make sure no baggage is lost, but also to deliver all items to the baggage claim within 15 minutes of the plane’s arrival.
On top of its 30-year record of no lost baggage, Kansai International Airport is an eight-time winner of an international award for best baggage delivery. Staff here take great pride in keeping passengers happy and coming back by providing the best service possible.
“We’re working hard to study and learn more each day so that we can make the passenger happy. I really think that’s the spirit of Japanese hospitality,” one employee told NPR.
Unfortunately, Kansai International Airport may not keep its incredible record for very long, simply because it may not be around in a couple of decades. Because it was built on two artificial islands in Osaka Bay, it has been sinking since it started operating. Engineers took sinking into consideration, but not at its current rate, and despite having a seawall built around it to prevent flooding, it could be rendered unusable by 2056.
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