In Frankfurt, the system handles 92,500 bags per day on about 600 flights, officials say. In contrast, there are about 62,000 departing bags each day at Kennedy and 42,300 at LaGuardia Airport. In the United States, many airlines already use bar codes on luggage tags to match bags on international flights with passengers' boarding passes. And some experts argue that if airlines were forced to do bag match, their economic self-interest would spur them to quickly develop speedier methods. My initial feeling is it isn't as difficult as some quite well-informed, reasonable people would argue.
People have to come at it by making it work themselves.
That same day, a bomb in an unaccompanied suitcase on a Canadian jetliner exploded in Tokyo while being transferred to an Air India flight. Both were believed to be the work of Sikh terrorists. Vincent, then the FAA's civil aviation security director, says he dictated an emergency security directive the same day he was informed a bomb was believed hidden in an unaccompanied bag aboard the Air India flight. The rule, requiring U.S. carriers flying from high-risk international airports to match luggage to passengers, and to open and search any unaccompanied bags, was greeted by airlines with consternation and widespread condemnation. Vincent retired from the FAA the following year, citing the agency's reluctance to impose tougher security measures and his frustration at what he viewed as its oversolicitousness of the airlines.