British Airways (BA) and its parent company International Airlines Group (IAG) are preparing to deploy baggage robots at London’s Gatwick Airport, hoping to ease the pressure of being understaffed.
According to the Telegraph, BA has already been testing the driverless vehicles at Heathrow Airport, where they are about to enter full-time service. With the success of the Heathrow trial, Gatwick is next on the list. From May, one of the robots will start operating at the airport, with more to follow depending on how the trial period goes.
You need 90% less labour and equipment, so it is very efficient.
David Keene, Aurrigo CEO
“Often you’re in the airport building and it’s fantastic, you’re on the plane and it’s quite modern, but then you get off and it’s lotto time at the baggage carousel. First of all, you might have a long wait. Secondly, your bag might not have made it – and that really dents the customer experience. Everyone tends to blame the airline, because that’s who you’re flying with, but it’s not actually the airlines handling the bags in a lot of cases”, Aurrigo CEO David Keene explained. “So taking that back and being able to own the customer experience is a really important part of it.”
The robots, built by Aurrigo and costing between £100,000 and £250,000 (€117,000 to €292,000), depending on the models, should not only increase efficiency, but also safety. Most importantly, with the staff shortages that have followed the Covid pandemic, which have led to frequent ground staff strikes around the world, the robots should greatly alleviate staff workload.
“We are working with Aurrigo to trial the use of autonomous baggage trollies, to help support the work of the fantastic baggage teams at our group airlines and our ground handling partners”, said Steve McGowan, senior vice president for Airport Futures at IAG.
Initially, the vehicles will only transport the baggage containers to and from planes to the terminals, where humans will still be loading and unloading the suitcases. The next step would be to deploy models that also have robot arms to load and unload the containers by themselves.
Aurrigo’s latest version of electric-powered autonomous vehicle is also being tested at Singapore’s Changi Airport, where previous models have been trialled since February 2022. According to Keene, other airports have also expressed interest in acquiring the robots, including Munich and Stuttgart in Germany and Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport.
