r/woahthatsinteresting • u/wafodumebeseraw • 7d ago

How Qantas treats their customer's baggage

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308

u/PersimmonHot9732 7d ago

The sooner these jobs are automated the better. At least a machine won't intentionally damage your property.

67

u/ImportanceAlone4077 7d ago

So true, i don’t understand why that part can’t be automated.

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u/a_spoopy_ghost 7d ago

Cause it’s cheap labor. Companies are mostly interested in replacing the higher paid positions. But not too high paid, those guys are valuable you see

13

u/Triffinator 7d ago

Australia automated checkout staff at grocery stores about a decade ago.

Can't get much cheaper than automating out a 16 year old.

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u/Card_Board_Robot_5 7d ago

More like 20 16-65 year olds on rotating shifts.....

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u/a_spoopy_ghost 7d ago

Fair! My comment was referring more to online support staff. In person staff can be charged as “unskilled labor” and thus minimum wage. Online support staff may require education, benefits and unions (the horror). Automating your programmers and support is way cheaper in the short term than automating the minimum wage muscle

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u/boxweb 7d ago

Most of the people working at grocery stores are adults.

0

u/xjustforpornx 7d ago

It's the cost to automate vs the cost of labor. Automated check out the hard part is done by the customer. Automating picking up and moving objects that vary in size weight and material is very hard. It's why shipping is done in standardized containers.

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u/GuaranteeAfter 7d ago

There is no cheap labour in Australia

And these guys certainly aren't cheap

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u/SilentSausages 7d ago

I worked as one when I was like 18 and the pay was so fucking good, I had to leave because I wanted to be an engineer and now that I am one I don’t even earn that much more compared to then haha - more room for improvement in my current job admittedly.

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u/jankenpoo 7d ago

But they are currently cheaper than robots.

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u/Dutchmondo 7d ago

Once the cheap labor is gone, the higher paid positions no longer need to be higher paid. Why do you need someone to keep to proles in line when there are no proles?

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u/dofep 7d ago

Because it's not so simple to automate for every single bag type. There are robots out there doing it today, but still need plenty of human intervention.

Curious your credentials and background to speak so confidently on the subject.

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u/zangrabar 7d ago

Those in management are scapegoats when something super illegal gets caught. That’s why they keep them still.

3

u/DylanSpaceBean 7d ago

As someone who has worked at multiple warehouse that had auto depal machines. They destroyed pallets of one product every day, I can’t imagine a machine that does odd shaped along with soft/hard bags will be better.

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u/TerrificDinner93 7d ago

It could, easily, but the upfront cost is big and those guys are cheap labor

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u/PersimmonHot9732 7d ago

Nobody in Australia is cheap labor

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u/Noryian 7d ago

Because machines break more often than people do. Simple as that. And when it happens, you need people to do this job anyway, otherwise you'll have to stop all the operations. Which means losing money.

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u/paradox_valestein 7d ago

The cost to buy those machines is gonna be more than the wages paid to those guys for like 10 years combine

1

u/Caridor 7d ago

I'm sure it can, at least to an extent. Just make the luggage bay removable and tippable. Much less shock to the luggage and probably faster. You'd need a guy there to dislodge any problematic luggage but you could do it.

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u/AFRIKKAN 7d ago

Hahah this guy thinks automation will fix this. Nope I work in a warehouse with automated shit and they gave up when the robots either broke everything wouldn’t work right or would need constant handholding incase of changing conditions cause the robots couldnt. Until ai can be placed in robots and robots are built to specialize in more then one thing and adapt to changing circumstances you will have fleshie to do it.

1

u/-Birds-Are-Not-Real- 7d ago

Soooo how do you get bags out of the belly of the plane? Robots can't do that work. 

And even if they did they would be mind numbingly slow. These planes got fast turn around times to get bags and freight off and to reload. 

With the tech today a 15 min to 30 minute turn around would easily be 2 to 3hrs if not more for a robot a to do it. 

1

u/CrazyIvanoveich 7d ago

People are cheaper and you don't have to maintain them or pay somebody to do so. You just pick up a new one once the old one is worn out and beat up.

1

u/baucher04 7d ago

anything that requires a person to use their body, a machine will be super costly.
people always thought the blue color jobs would be replaced by ai and machines, but it's mainly "intelectual" tasks that are somewhat doable without being too costly.
It's obviously not going to replace a lawyer, author etc.

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u/balacio 6d ago

Because there is no standard for luggages

1

u/Raddz5000 6d ago

The cases are irregularly shaped and stacked. Not optimal for automation. They theoretically could develop a more advanced system to parse and manipulate the irregularly shaped and stacked cases. Best thing would be to develop a more standard case stacking and handling system that would be built from the ground up for automation across more tasks that just this specific sort of task.

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u/ramstrikk 6d ago

I've actually worked on baggage (where the bags come down from check in) and the ramp (loading bags on the plane). The part where people are needed is getting the bags onto the trailers, bags off the trailers, bags from the opening of the 737 or small aircraft lower hold, and someone to stack these bags under the plane. I bet some of these tasks could be automated but sometime Tetris like staking is required and this had not been demonstrated as possible yet with automation.

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u/Elegant-Craft9522 7d ago

Most of it already is automated, guy scans the bags, they get sent through the whole thing, then another guy scams and transports it to the plane, where it's scanned again lol, and most of the machines throw your bags down the corridors wendys they need to go, I've spent some time down there lol

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u/PersimmonHot9732 7d ago

So this step is purely to damage bags?

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u/panamaspace 7d ago

The cruelty is the point.

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u/Windyvale 7d ago

Nobody gets to go through an airport happy.

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u/Elegant-Craft9522 7d ago

These guys have obviously are doing extra to throw them, but most people don't slam them, they do throw them most of the time, but not with malice like that, it's definitely on them

1

u/GrumbusWumbus 7d ago

It would be really really hard to automate this step because nothing is standardized. Airplane holds and baggage size varies in every way possible and nothing short of a human sized robot with human hands and human eyes could do it.

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u/xjustforpornx 7d ago

This step is to transition from the central terminal to the individual plane and from the individual plane to the terminal. It is very hard and expensive to automate loading and unloading a cargo hold.

1

u/Garbagegoldfish 6d ago

These people filmed themselves to be “funny” and are intentionally being terrible

This is not the norm

Source: I do this for a living

1

u/Wise-Activity1312 7d ago

But can we program the machines to damage people, especially these two?

I want to see a car manufacturing robot suplex these knuckleheads into next week.

1

u/smudos2 7d ago

Also for the people themselves, it's a fucking shitjob and many people suffer damages working it for tok long

1

u/No_Milk_4143 7d ago

Believe it or not, some bags pay double for that kind of treatment.

1

u/Skragdush 7d ago

Ah yes. Let's replace a whole lot of workers because of the actions of some. Your precious property is so much more valuable than people having a job.

1

u/Temporary_Shirt_6236 7d ago

No, it'll just unintentionally damage your property and then corporate accountability will fall from it's current low right down to zero. Not to mention kill jobs. All because a very small percentage of workers are dickheads (which happens in every role in every industry).

1

u/SheTheThunder 7d ago

100% this. People like this deserve to lose their jobs. If to AI, even better.. at least AI won't do this on purpose.

1

u/TheAatar 7d ago

I remember a video of a luggage sorting machine where it brutally punted bags into different belts.

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u/caustictoast 7d ago

Idk how you automate it more with current tech. It’s not like luggage’s are standard size, each plane requires something different

1

u/academic_spaghetti 7d ago

Believe it or not, the majority of damage comes from the automated parts. Not in this case obviously, but some of the automated parts are as rough as these fools. The majority of employees lightly toss or carefully set down bags. Source: worked at a major airport for a year.

1

u/hanks_panky_emporium 7d ago

In instances where those go awry you'll get a letter saying something to the effect of 'our machine accidentally blended your entire suitcase into small cube like chunks. Here's ten dollars to offset the damage. You agreed to this settlement when you purchased your ticket'

A baggage sorting machine broke an acquaintances laptop in half so they were compensated about a tenth of the worth of the bags contents. 'You agreed to our terms of service' type deal.

1

u/Pinklady777 7d ago

It would save a lot of backs too.

1

u/buttscratcher3k 7d ago

I assume there part of a union and that's why it isn't automated yet

1

u/Monster887 7d ago

Yep. And then we’ll get to listen to guys like this complain about how they lost their jobs to machines because the company wants to save money. No. You lost your job to a machine because the company got tired of hearing from disgruntled customers because you couldn’t do your job correctly because you’re a piece of shit person.

1

u/Garbagegoldfish 6d ago

Delta employs 90,000 baggage handlers alone

Where are they to go?

1

u/Toupz 6d ago

Wait till you see the pinball toggles that redirect baggage...

1

u/NoGoodMc2 6d ago

Do you work in the tech industry?

1

u/PersimmonHot9732 6d ago

Manufacturing.

0

u/Odd_Addendum2409 7d ago

I totally agree! Bring in robots and send these idiots to the dole queue for the rest of their lives.