A baggage handling system consists of a series of automated conveyor belts, destination-coded vehicles (DCVs)- unmanned carts mounted on tracks and powered by linear induction motors-label scanners, sorting machines and security checkpoints that serve three main tasks.
The first is to move bags from an airport’s check-in area to the departure gate, to transfer luggage from one gate to another, and to move baggage from arrival gates back to the baggage claim area safely.
To understand how the system works, it is best to follow a single bag from check-in to an aircraft. From check-in a bag has a label attached to it that acts as a tag, containing all necessary information on its target destination and delivery time frame, before being carried off on a conveyor belt to an automated barcode scanner.
Here its tag is read and loaded onto the system’s computer database, allowing it to track the individual piece of luggage throughout the rest of its journey.
After this initial scan the luggage is then carried by further conveyor belts to a security checkpoint and x-ray machine, where it is scanned automatically again for compromising objects or suspicious substances.
Once it has been cleared by security the baggage is then loaded onto a DCV and carried through underground tunnels (sometimes up to a kilometre away from the initial check-in desk) to its target destination gate.
At the junction for the requested gate, the DCV then dumps the luggage onto a parallel-running conveyor that takes it to the gate’s sorting station.
At this point the automation in the baggage handling system ends and human baggage handlers then sort and load the luggage into containers ready to be wheeled to the plane’s hold.
Luggage is separated depending on size, end destination (ie is the passenger going to be transferred at the next airport or is that their end destination) and type – skis and other Odd-shaped objects for example.