Wong Yiu-fai, head of technical services and procurement at the Airport Authority, said Hong Kong's phased migration to electronic tags for baggage handling satisfied the requirements of airlines and other relevant service providers.

'With the support of our business partners, we have overcome the hurdles in integrating the RFID system with other existing systems involved in the baggage-handling process,' Mr Wong said.

RFID technology supplier Symbol Technologies and the systems integration unit of the Marubeni Group were the main contractors for the project, which started in the middle of last year.

The authority's RFID roll-out involves the use of tags, each combining a silicon chip and an antenna, attached to pieces of luggage. The authority also installed wireless reader systems at various nodes in the airport, including baggage carousels, unit-load devices and conveyors, to read the tags.

At the initial deployment phase, the authority used so-called 'read only' RFID tags. These tags were attached to pieces of luggage with the traditional bar code label.

When the luggage goes into the baggage handling system, a wireless reader scans the data on each RFID tag. The information is combined with the data in the traditional bar code label, which contains data such as the flight number and destination of the luggage.

The luggage then goes through the sorter for an X-ray check and the so-called 'laterals', the automated baggage-carrying infrastructure. Staff at laterals, where another set of wireless readers are positioned, then transfer the luggage into the container.

When the luggage is moved from the laterals, a signal indicates it has gone to the right container. Previously, this process was done manually on the bar code-scanning system.

In the new set-up, baggage reconciliation is centralised to improve efficiency. Administrators also automatically collect data without line of sight or manual scanning, unlike in bar code-tracking systems. 'More than 60,000 pieces of luggage have been tagged during the migration period that started in June,' Mr Wong said. 'We estimate our annual use of tags will reach around 20 million pieces in the next few years.'

For a planned second phase of deployment, the authority plans to crank up efficiencies by introducing RFID printers, which can produce 'read/write' tags at the check-in counter for baggage sorting.

These tags will be scanned by both the RFID reader and the bar-code reader, which eases the adoption period for other airports still using the bar code system.

Mike Meranda, president of RFID standards promotion body EPCglobal, said the Hong Kong initiative was expected to help spur a number of airports in the Asia-Pacific region to move its RFID pilot projects into full-fledged implementations.

RFID development in Hong Kong is being watched closely by RFID suppliers such as Symbol and other potential users.

Recent retail and manufacturing RFID deployments have been testing thousands of tags used on large box crates, but transport applications such as those at Hong Kong International Airport raise those RFID tag volumes to millions of units.