Checked Bag Fees: Money for Nothing

With its old system, the Last Vegas airport found that it needed to have workers manually help 10 percent of the bags through the system. Now, virtually no bags need help.

The airport paid for the system and is picking up the tab for the added cost of the special tags. Each regular baggage tag costs about 4 cents but the tags with chips cost about 21 cents each.

That doesn't mean there aren't issues. The radio chip tracking system only works for the part of the system controlled by the airport -- basically the security scans. Once the bags are sorted to the different airlines, the airlines revert to the old bar code system. None of the airlines have invested money in such a tracking system yet.

Rosemary Vassiliadis, deputy director of the Clark County Department of Aviation, which owns and runs the airport, said in a statement that the airport is very happy with the system. Bags now make it through the system "with better than 99 percent accuracy."

"As a discretionary travel market, we can't afford to see our customers leave Las Vegas with a bad impression of our airport," Vassiliadis said.

This new system "won't solve every problem, but it's certainly played a part in allowing this airport to operate efficiently," she said, "and it's got the potential to do even more once it's rolled out [on] a wider basis."