MEA moves to cloud to triple bag handling capacity at airport

Middle East Airlines-Air Liban (MEA) said it has moved the baggage reconciliation system (BRS) at the Rafic Hariri International Airport-Beirut to the cloud by installing SITA Bag Manager’s cloud solution.

The cloud solution will enable the airport to triple its bag handling capacity to around nine million bags per year from three million bags without any significant additional investment in equipment.

The move is part of the renewal of MEA’s technology contract with SITA which is a global provider of information technology (IT) solutions to the air transport industry.

“By adopting this technology, the airport and airline's operational costs will plummet with the server-less design that avoids on-site interventions to refresh, upgrade, maintain, and support multiple obsolete devices, such as servers,” the two companies said in a joint statement.

The cloud solution will reduce the number of mishandled bags and allow their quick repatriation which will result in higher customer satisfaction and decreased costs. SITA Bag Manager tracks bags and scans and evaluates the characteristics of each bag against flight parameters to ensure it is loaded onto the right plane.

Adib Shreif, head of the IT department at MEA, said: “SITA has been the provider of BRS at Rafic Hariri International Airport - Beirut since 2009, and we're excited to continue our technology partnership with this next stage of our digitalization program. By moving a server-based system to the cloud, we've cut down on cumbersome operation procedures, eliminated regular maintenance costs, and freed up resources to focus on other essential services.”