By John Oyuke

International Air Transport Association (IATA) plans to conduct an audit in Kenya to establish the depth of standards of baggage handling at the country’s main airport.

Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) is one of the 20 airports to be audited under its Baggage Improvement Programme (BIP) this year.

The five-day engagement in cooperation with local Airlines and Kenya Airports Authority will identify baggage-handling and accompanying solutions.

BIP aims at cutting by half the industry’s wide mishandling by 2012.

The programme will target the 200 airports that feature in 85 per cent of all passenger-mishandling claims.

According to IATA, the top 80 airports will receive free dedicated consulting services from the BIP team at the rate of 20 airports per year, beginning this year.

The remaining 120 airports will become part of a self-help programme that will be facilitated by IATA Country Managers and supported by workshops and a solutions toolkit.

The self-help programme will begin next year. JKIA is the biggest and busiest airport in East Africa. Except for visitors to Kenya, it is an important hub for connecting flights to other countries in the region.

The BIP visit planned for later this year comes against some emerging silver linings in the otherwise continuing gloomy economic situation, with studies showing that global baggage mishandling has fallen by 20 per cent. Earlier this year, SITA, a multinational company that offers Information Technology services to the aviation industry, issued its 2009 Baggage Report indicating for the first time in the history of the report, that baggage mishandling decreased.

The number of mishandled bags fell by over a fifth, from 42.4 million in 2007 to 32.8 million in last year, saving the industry $800 million.

Andrew Price, BIP Manager cautioned that these findings did not indicate that the industry no longer has problems. He said a success rate of 98.6 per cent still equals 90,000 bags mishandled a day.