Interesting insights into SSRs

Am doing further studies on SSRs and found some interesting items:

- as I said before, AirAsia, being low-cost carrier, does not do much SSR. They have explicitly said they do not handle UMs. For them, "Children under 12 years old on the day of travel requiring supervision will not be regarded as able to travel independently on the basis that they may endanger themselves or others if travelling unaccompanied." <- O RLY? I've seen more damages being done by adults...

-AK now does handle wheelchair-bound passengers, but only after they got a lot of flak for not providing the service...And they have further TnC attached...

"AirAsia can carry only a maximum of 8 guests per flight who have reduced mobility* provided that quadraplegic guests are limited to not more than 4 per flight. Under certain circumstances we may require the guest to travel with a companion.

* 'reduced mobility' refers to paraplegic or quadriplegic guests."

-Lactose-intolerant and gluten-allergic are covered with special meals, but peanut-allergic are NOT among them. Not really surprising though, given how much peanuts are on board the aircraft. On a side note I like those salty peanuts MAS serves and I WON'T be happy if they are gone...

User Requirement interview

Just called both MH station at JHB as well as the airport. MH said that I should refer to station manager at the airport, while Senai said the HR dept. should be the one I refer to, both during weekdays office hours.

That proves rather problematic as I have no transportation ( That Proton Wira back in KB that is earmarked for my usage here is being fixed after someone decided it would be a good idea to crash onto it...) and taxi fare to and fro JHB would be like RM60, not to mention I only have Wednesday, Thursday and Friday free after 12pm... Probably it would be easier if I could just do the interview via the phone instead of going to Senai.

Regardless it seems I won't be able to complete Chapter 2 before 13th...

Privacy Concerns about RFID and Possible Solutions

It can't be denied that RFID is great for tracking items, but due to this attribute it is frequently debated that RFID creates one Orwellian society.

With these tags, some conspiracy theorists (which I always regard them as lunatics) say that manufacturers will have more access to consumers' information, such as shpping habits, usage patterns, and preferences.  They also suggest that government also use it to monitor the citizens.

Regardless of the presence of such conspiracy theorists and their fairy tales, the fact that abuse of this otherwise convenient technology can cause privacy invasion is too hard to ignore. Therefore, IBM came up with one possible solution: Clipped Tag. It behaves exactly like the conventional tags, except the consumers can tear up the antennas along a perforated line so its range can be dramatically reduced from several meters to just a few centimeters. It should be noted the RFID chip is still intact and still contains its data, as long as the reader is close enough to read it.

This is what I plan to implement on the boarding pass - since a portion of the pass is going to be separated, it might as well put antennas on that portion to automatically cut off the antennas when the pass is fed into a reader, leaving the stub with its chip intact to the passenger. This is a crude visualization of the RFID-enabled pass will be:

Title officially approved

Now it's time to put the project into full thrust mode and concentrate more on this. Am gonna uninstall GTA IV from my PC for the time being to aviod my attention being diverted.

psmch1

Airline Special Service Request (SSR) Passengers Tracking System Using RFID

1.1 Introduction to the Project

When Wright Brothers first flew their Wright Flyer, nobody could predict how the flying machine, created purely for the purpose for the mankind to conquer the skies, would greatly change the way we live nowadays. Some 50 years later when Pan American World Airways launched its Boeing 707 flights to Europe, only the rich could enjoy the “jet-set” experience.

Long gone are the days when flying was only reserved for the rich and elite. Technology advancements have made the flying more accessible and affordable, not to mention safer, just like AirAsia’s slogan “Everyone can fly”.  Though, to make such slogan stay true, some passengers need some form of assistance from the airline. Those assistances required from the airlines are collectively called Special Service Requests.

Special Service Requests (thereafter called SSRs) are employed by airlines to capture special requirements for a particular passenger, for instance unaccompanied minors, wheelchair-bound passengers, and passenger with disabilities, which are covered in the project scope, as well as other information that are beyond the project’s scope such as passengers with special dietary requirements or passenger travelling with pets in the cabin.

SSRs are supplementary to Passenger Name Record (PNR) and are typically requested upon booking so the airline can be informed about the passenger’s special requirements in advance and prepare accordingly, for example special dietary requirements (Halal, Vegetarian, Diabetic, etc.) need to be requested at least 24 hours before flight. Some of the services are chargeable, such as Unaccompanied Minors. Typically passengers with SSR will be assisted by the airline’s ground staff at both the departing airport and arriving airport.

1.2 Problem Background

Often managing large amount of passengers causes management headaches to the airlines and the airport authorities, especially if the airport is a particular airline’s main hub which thousands go through the airport daily or even hourly (Atlanta’s main airport, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, processed 90 million passengers in 2008 and is among the world’s busiest), and more so if irregularities happen, for example multiple flights are delayed due to bad weather. Add in human errors and omissions, often resulted due to extra, unexpected workload in such situations, and this creates an opportunity for Murphy’s Law to happen – if something can go wrong, it will go wrong, at the worst possible time, in the worst possible way.

The primary problem with existing SSR system for handling unaccompanied minors, wheelchair passengers, and disabled passengers is its lack of a central tracking system. As mentioned earlier, human factors can cause irregularities to happen if someone is not careful. On June 2009, Continental Airlines failed to put two unaccompanied minors on the flights they were supposed to be on, the result being them arriving somewhere they didn’t expect to arrive at.

Such incidents tend to cost airlines financially in terms of monetary compensation, replacement flights to send the passengers to the right destination, as well as charges imposed as a result of civil lawsuits. It can also dent their reputations and turn away potential customers, both new and recurring. If a central tracking system can track exactly where they are, and whether they are at the right place, it can possibly save the airlines in the long run.

1.3 Project Aim

The project aims to develop an RFID-based tracking system for passengers with certain SSR codes that can provide near real-time location about their whereabouts and notify the administration staff accordingly.

 

1.4 Project Objectives

The objectives of the project are to:

1. research for similar system and the industry’s requirements
2. design the system according to the specifications obtained using appropriate system design
3. develop the system, and
4. test the system for its functionality

 

1.5 Scope

The scopes for the projects are as below:

1. The research will only be done in one airport for one client (i.e. airline), although it could be implemented for other airlines and airports as well.
2. The system only covers passengers with following SSRs: unaccompanied minors, wheelchair passengers, and disabled passengers.
3. The system runs independent from PNR database as the format for PNR is not known, and it may not be standardised among different airlines.
4. The system assumes the passengers possess their own RFID tags at all times.
5. The system only tracks outbound passengers’ movements and not inbound passengers nor connecting passengers.

1.6 Importance of the Project

If the usage of the RFID-enabled boarding passes for passengers with SSR is deemed acceptable, the RFID boarding passes can track all the passengers requiring special attentions and reducing possibilities of mishandling caused by one human’s error. Such could save the airline financially in compensations due to mishaps as well as liability charges caused.

Furthermore it can also be made possible to extend the functionality of the system by implementing the tracking system for everyone who is flying. Passenger counts for both ground staff and cabin crew can be automated to reveal who has not been aboard yet or who has boarded the wrong flight.

 

1.7 Report Organisation

Chapter 2 will cite references and citations related to the industry and system’s design as well as implementations.

Chapter 3 will discuss methodology used in the designing of the system.

Chapter 4 will highlight specifications for the system. And,

Chapter 5 will conclude the report.

Basic insights into my planned PSM project

After toying with the blog system to get myself more familiar to the Blogger system by posting some off-topic items, it is time to get more concentrated on the PSM itself.

Basically what the system I'm planning to do, provided it's approved by the PSM commitee, is about passenger tracking system for those with Special Service Requests (SSRs) uasing RFID system. That's especially useful to track unaccompanied minors. BTW I used to be kinda fidgety and wouldn't stay seated but luckily I didn't end up boarding a flight to nowhere like this poor child (discussions about the event).

I originally intended to integrate the RFID system into PNR (passenger name record) database, since SSR supplements PNR, but instead I'm thinking of making it an entirely independent system due to:

1. different airlines may have different PNR formats, especially among LCCs and non-IATA airlines, and

2. I doubt any airlines or travel agents will provide me sufficient information on how to decode this (sourced from here):

MPM304/JC YULOU 2GM3/JC AG 69145576 22FEB
1.1CLIENT/ALLAN
1 AC 105Y 21DEC YYZYVR BK1 0715 0916 FR
2 AC3992Y 28DEC YVRYYZ BK1 1430 2141 FR
FONE-YULAS/514-874-0202 BSP CANADA IDS/69145576-JOAN
FOP:-AX370000000000028/D1201/C1234ABC33
TKTG-T/
TRMK-G*RC/91

All I know from this record field is that someone named Allan has booked on 22 February a return trip from Toronto (YYZ) to Vancouver (YVR) on Air Canada (AC) flights AC105, departing at 0715 on 21st December,  and returning aboard  AC3992 at 1430 on 28th December, aboard Economy Class (Y) on both legs. There's no indication that Allan has requested any SSR, but that's beside the point.

Seeing these circumstances, I'm thinking of implementing the system by coding the passenger's name and the details into whatever space available in the RFID tag, rather than retrieve it from PNR. I'll probably use Java for this system, but I'm still looking for an appropriate database system.

More updates to come when I come across some ideas.

More info regarding SSR codes. Not all of the codes are within the scope of the system.