SATE, BHS, BSM, pBSM... the world of airport baggage handling is full of acronyms. Here we explain what they mean, who uses them, and above all, what FlightSort does with them so your team sees a flight's real status before it becomes a problem.
Four acronyms describe who does what with your bag before you see it again at your destination.
It's the common name in Spanish airports for what's internationally known as BHS. Belts, scanners, sorters and lanes that physically move every bag from the counter to the aircraft hold.
Why it matters: FlightSort doesn't replace SATE — it interprets it. It translates what happens inside the installation into a screen any operator understands in seconds.
The international equivalent of SATE. An airport or terminal's physical baggage-sorting infrastructure.
Why it matters: FlightSort connects to the data BHS/SATE generates without touching how it operates — it's a visibility layer, not physical control.
The airline's system that manages check-in, seat assignment and boarding. It's what prints the bag tag and decides which flight it's associated with.
Why it matters: the DCS is where the data originates — that's where the message saying "this bag exists and belongs to this flight" comes from, which FlightSort receives and displays in real time.
A system that matches, before departure, which bags were loaded against which passengers actually boarded. It fulfills a regulatory requirement (ICAO Annex 17): no bag can fly without its passenger on board. If something doesn't add up, it triggers a BUM (Baggage Unload Message) and that bag is pulled before the flight closes.
Why it matters: FlightSort's "baggage in transit" alarms are designed to get ahead of the problems the BRS would catch at the very end — before it's too late to act.
The IATA baggage standard (RP1745) defines nearly a dozen messages. In practice, FlightSort really only cares about one — the rest is noise that never reaches the operator's screen.
The only message that actually moves the needle. It's a bag's "birth certificate": it reports that the bag exists, which flight it belongs to, and its priority. Without it, no sorting system knows what to do with the bag.
Why it matters: it's the foundation of almost all of FlightSort's visual logic — the moment a bag "appears" in the system.
Every airport checks in, boards, and closes its flights with its own internal naming — it's never the same from one installation to the next. FlightSort translates it into a single consistent sequence: Scheduled → Check-in open → Boarding → Last call → Gate closed → Departed (with Cancelled/Diverted as separate branches).
Why it matters: it doesn't matter whether your airport's handling system uses "CHK"/"BRD"/"LSC"/"CLS"/"AIR" or any naming of its own — in FlightSort you always see the same vocabulary, the same color, and the same behavior. Anyone familiar with Eurocontrol's A-CDM standard will recognize some parallel in the departure phases (boarding, gate closure, take-off) — though FlightSort isn't an A-CDM implementation, it only shares part of its operational vocabulary.
None of the six triggers an alarm on its own: they're pure traceability, telling you what phase the flight is in. The critical priority is a separate, purely time-based alert — it fires the moment fewer than 30 minutes remain before departure with baggage still "in transit," almost always before Gate closed. It never waits for Departed: by then it would already be too late to act.
The whole system revolves around a single number. It's the key that connects the physical tag to everything digital.
The 10-digit code printed on the bag tag. It's the unique "license plate" that any system, airport, or airline can read and recognize.
Why it matters: it's the common thread behind every BSM, BPM, or BUM — without this number there'd be no way to know all the messages are talking about the same bag.
Every BSM classifies the bag as Local (checked in at this airport), Transfer (connecting), Remote (checked in elsewhere), or final destination (X).
Why it matters: transfer baggage concentrates the most operational risk — FlightSort visually distinguishes it to prioritize the operator's attention.
The code of the airline that issued the tag, included in the LPN. On codeshare flights it unambiguously identifies who the bag actually belongs to.
Why it matters: most relevant in interline/codeshare operations, where several airlines share the same physical flight.
With all that raw information, FlightSort builds a layer of operational concepts designed to be read at a glance.
The variant of the BSM message that reveals, beyond the fact the bag exists, exactly which check-in counter generated it.
Why it matters: it's what lets FlightSort show real-time counts per counter, not just per flight. At airports where this data doesn't exist, FlightSort adapts and simply stops showing that information instead of showing false data.
Bags already checked in that haven't yet been confirmed as delivered to their flight's departure carousel. It's the time window where the operation is most likely to go wrong.
Why it matters: it's FlightSort's central indicator. When this number doesn't drop to zero near the flight's closing time, the operator sees it immediately — without having to go looking for it.
A check-in counter where a high proportion of bags weren't correctly identified by the tag-reading arch — they enter the sorter without having passed through a valid arch. It's calculated by a dedicated query in the airport's own Oracle database, not an interpretation by FlightSort.
Why it matters: it's a read-quality alarm about the counter itself — it points to a physical problem (a badly printed tag, a misaligned arch) before it turns into lost or misrouted baggage.
Not to be confused with the normal wait between BSM and pBSM (see the pBSM card): that's a bag that doesn't have a counter associated yet, with no problem behind it. "Blind counter" is an active alarm about the counter itself.
It activates when baggage is still "in transit" as the flight's closing time approaches — the moment there's no room left to maneuver.
Why it matters: it turns a number into a decision: the operator knows, without interpreting anything, that this flight needs attention right now.
Every state change (a new bag, a resolved counter, an alarm) shows up on screen the moment it happens, without waiting for the operator to reload anything.
Why it matters: it's the difference between reacting to a problem and getting ahead of it.
The mobile app keeps the last known information and stays useful even if the connection to the server is momentarily lost.
Why it matters: on the tarmac and in handling areas, coverage isn't always perfect — FlightSort is built for that real environment, not just for an office with good wifi.
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We'll show you what all this looks like on screen, with real operational data — no strings attached.