CHAPTER 7 | PROCESS STRATEGY 303
Video Case
Alaska Airlines: 20-Minute Baggage Process—Guaranteed!
Alaska Airlines is unique among the nine major U.S. carriers not
only for its extensive flight coverage of remote towns throughout
Alaska (it also covers the U.S., Hawaii, and Mexico from its pri-
mary hub in Seattle). It is also one of the smallest independent
airlines, with 10,300 employees, including 3,000 flight attendants
and 1,500 pilots. What makes it really unique, though, is its abil-
ity to build state-of-the-art processes, using the latest technology,
that yield high customer satisfaction. Indeed, J. D. Power and
Associates has ranked Alaska Airlines highest in North America
for seven years in a row for customer satisfaction.
Alaska Airlines was the first to sell tickets via the Internet,
first to offer Web check-in and print boarding passes online, and
first with kiosk check-in. As Wayne Newton, Director of System
Operation Control, states, “We are passionate about our pro-
cesses. If it’s not measured, it’s not managed.”
One of the processes Alaska is most proud of is its baggage han-
dling system. Passengers can check in at kiosks, tag their own bags
with bar code stickers, and deliver them to a customer service agent
at the carousel, which carries the bags through the vast under-
ground system that eventually delivers the bags to a baggage han-
dler. En route, each bag passes through TSA automated screening
and is manually opened or inspected if it appears suspicious. With
the help of bar code readers, conveyer belts automatically sort and
transfer bags to their location (called a “pier”) at the tarmac level.
A baggage handler then loads the bags onto a cart and takes it to
the plane for loading by the ramp team waiting inside the cargo
hold. There are different procedures for “hot bags” (bags that have
less than 30 minutes between transfer) and for “cold bags” (bags
with over 60 minutes between plane transfers). Hot bags are deliv-
ered directly from one plane to another (called “tail-to-tail”). Cold
bags are sent back into the normal conveyer system.
The process continues on the destination side with Alaska’s
unique guarantee that customer luggage will be delivered to the
terminal’s carousel within 20 minutes of the plane’s arrival at the
gate. If not, Alaska grants each passenger a 2,000 frequent-flier
mile bonus!
The airline’s use of technology includes bar code scanners to
check in the bag when a passenger arrives, and again before it
is placed on the cart to the plane. Similarly, on arrival, the time
the passenger door opens is electronically noted and bags are
again scanned as they are placed on the baggage carousel at the
destination—tracking this metric means that the “time to carou-
sel” (TTC) deadline is seldom missed. And the process almost
guarantees that the lost bag rate approaches zero. On a recent day,
only one out of 100 flights missed the TTC mark. The baggage
process relies not just on technology, though. There are detailed,
documented procedures to ensure that bags hit the 20-minute
timeframe. Within one minute of the plane door opening at the
gate, baggage handlers must begin the unloading. The first bag
must be out of the plane within three minutes of parking the plane.
This means the ground crew must be in the proper location—with
their trucks and ramps in place and ready to go.
Largely because of technology, flying on Alaska Airlines
is remarkably reliable—even in the dead of an Alaska winter
with only two hours of daylight, 50 mph winds, slippery run-
ways, and low visibility. Alaska Airlines has had the industry’s
best on-time performance, with 87% if its flights landing on
time.
Discussion Questions*
1. Prepare a flowchart of the process a passenger’s bag follows
from kiosk to destination carousel. (See Example 2 in Chapter 6
for a sample flowchart.) Include the exception process for the
TSA opening of selected bags.
Alaska Airlines
M09_HEIZ0422_12_SE_C07.indd 303M09_HEIZ0422_12_SE_C07.indd 303 20/11/15 4:35 PM20/11/15 4:35 PM
2. What other processes can an airline examine? Why is each
important?
3. How does the kiosk alter the check-in process?
4. What metrics (quantifiable measures) are needed to track bag-
gage?
5. What is the role of scanners in the baggage process?
* You may wish to view the video that accompanies this case before addressing these questions.
