On a string-tied tag, according to a spokesperson for Intermec, a tag and printer manufacturer, "the primary stress is applied to a very small section of the tag. The simple genius of the looped tag alone explains why so few bags get lost. Simply remove the entire adhesive backing and the loop tag becomes a very sticky sticker. And the ABT, unlike string tags and earlier loop-y tag ideas, is easily attached to items that lack handles - boxes, say. The current loop tag, a standardised strip of pressure-sensitive adhesive, looped through a handle and pressed to form an adhesive-to-adhesive bond, debuted with the ABT in the early '90s. Old tags were fastened with a string through a hole, but mechanised baggage systems eat these for breakfast. They must be easy to attach, but impossible to detach - until, that is, the bag arrives safely at its destination and the traveller wants to detach it. The winning combination is what IATA's spokesperson described as a "complex composite" of silicon and plastic the only paper in it is in the adhesive backing.īag tags must meet another set of contradictory requirements.
Plain old paper can't begin to meet all these requirements. And the tag must be flexible, inexpensive and disposable. Tags also can't tear - and crucially, if they're nicked, they must not tear further - as the bag lurches through mechanised airport baggage systems. In the interconnected, automated, all-weather world of modern aviation, tags must be resistant to cold, heat, sunlight, ice, oil, and especially moisture. Let's examine in detail the myriad improvements offered by the ABT, which symbolise as perfectly as anything air travel's transition from a rare luxury for the ultra-rich to safe, effective transport for a shrinking planet. Perhaps the earliest airline to implement ABTs system-wide was United, in 1992, according to Jon Barrere, a spokesperson for Print-O-Tape, a tag manufacturer and United's partner on the project. The modern tag is known as an automated baggage tag, and was first tried by many airlines in the early 1990s. Compare the two tags here: a Pan Am tag from the 1950s, and a modern tag of the sort an airline will put on your bag today. By the 1930s, says Keiser, they too had been widely adopted in aviation.īut as aviation grew still further, airline tags shed their maritime and railway heritage. "Separable" baggage tags, which featured a removable receipt for travellers, had first been developed for railways in 1882. According to Keiser, a space for weight was commonplace on airline tags by the 1920s. It's critical that airlines know how much bags weigh, and how they're distributed around the plane. What is inconsequential to ocean liners and railways, but vital to airlines? Weight. Maritime tags were the model, but with the occasional important tweak, as Melissa Keiser, an archivist for the National Air and Space Museum, points out. But initially, airlines had no need for destination tags: As the International Air Transport Association explained to me, "a passenger's chauffeur would drive the passenger to the aircraft side, and stewards would load the passenger's bags directly from the car to the aircraft." Nice.Īs air travel expanded beyond the perfumed realms of the chauffeured, destination tags became a necessity. The reverse held information such as the passenger's name, destination, stateroom and whether the bag was "Wanted in Stateroom" or "Not Wanted on Voyage."Įarly on, airlines offered labels that mimicked maritime-style advertising stickers, with lovely results. One side often bore the line's logo, as in this classic Cunard White Star tag. The other kind of tag - a destination tag - was more practical, though still aesthetically pleasing. Often these were pure advertising for the shipping line, with no room for personal information. Best known are the labels affixed to trunks.
In the old days - we're talking steam ships - there were two kinds of tags for luggage.
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