Bag Message

SITA Bag Message is the underlying messaging backbone that moves Baggage Source Messages (BSMs) and Baggage Processed Messages (BPMs) between airline departure control systems (DCS) and airport baggage handling systems. It operates on a hub-and-spoke architecture: any airline or airport connects once to SITA's network and gains immediate interoperability with every other connected party, eliminating the operational and financial burden of maintaining individual bilateral interfaces.

In practice, every time a passenger checks in a bag, the airline DCS generates a BSM describing the bag, its routing, and its physical characteristics. That message must reach the destination airport's sortation system in time to sort the bag correctly. Bag Message guarantees this delivery over a secured, redundant network — SLA-backed at 99.99% availability over a five-year track record. In the reverse direction, airports send BPMs back to airline DCS systems confirming bag processing status. The system handled over 3.8 billion messages in 2019 alone.

For airports operating as hub transfer points — which describes every major GCC international airport — managing dozens of separate airline interfaces to their baggage information display systems (BIDS) and sortation controllers is both costly and fragile. Bag Message centralises that connectivity into a single managed service. Its Bag Connect module generates pseudo-BSMs at transfer points where originating carrier BSMs do not arrive in time to drive sortation, preventing transfer bags from defaulting to manual handling. SITA Global Services monitors the platform continuously, with active fault resolution before service impact.