Baggage-Claim-as-a-Service: A Per-Party Reclaim System for Inbound Logistics in Smart Airports

Airports handle the final stage of the arriving passenger’s journey at the baggage claim hall, one of the least instrumented terminal operations. At most airports, arriving bags are discharged onto a shared recirculating carousel, a passive, first-come process that lengthens passenger waiting, congests the claim hall, and gives operators no per-party measure of service. This paper formalizes inbound claim as a measurable, controllable terminal service, termed Baggage-Claim-as-a-Service (BCaaS), in which the passenger party rather than the individual bag is the unit of service and the complete bag set is delivered against an observable delivery-time target. The paradigm is evaluated through a per-party, cluster-based reclaim architecture that consolidates each party’s bags, routes the cluster through a multi-level sortation network, releases the complete set at an authenticated collection point, and records per-party telemetry for service monitoring. Using a discrete-event simulation calibrated to King Khalid International Airport Terminal 5 and benchmarked against a conventional carousel across 27 scenarios, per-party reclaim reduces availability-based passenger, cluster, and flight delivery times by 38%, 51%, and 27% on average, largest under light load. The results show that per-party reclaim makes inbound terminal logistics observable and supports operator service-level monitoring, more sustainable urban mobility, and future field validation.