A baggage handling system is a type of

conveyor system A conveyor system is a common piece of mechanical handling equipment that moves materials from one location to another. Conveyors are especially useful in applications involving the transport of heavy or bulky materials. Conveyor systems allow ...

installed in

airport An airport is an aerodrome with extended facilities, mostly for commercial Aviation, air transport. They usually consist of a landing area, which comprises an aerially accessible open space including at least one operationally active surf ...

s that transports checked

luggage Baggage, or luggage, consists of bags, cases, and containers which hold a traveler's personal articles while the traveler is in transport, transit. A modern tourist, traveler can be expected to have packages containing clothing, toiletries, sma ...

from ticket counters to areas where the bags can be loaded onto

airplane An airplane (American English), or aeroplane (Commonwealth English), informally plane, is a fixed-wing aircraft that is propelled forward by thrust from a jet engine, Propeller (aircraft), propeller, or rocket engine. Airplanes come in a vari ...

s. A baggage handling system also transports checked baggage coming from airplanes to baggage claims or to an area where the bag can be loaded onto another airplane.

History

The first

automated Automation describes a wide range of technologies that reduce human intervention in processes, mainly by predetermining decision criteria, subprocess relationships, and related actions, as well as embodying those predeterminations in machine ...

baggage handling system was invented by BNP Associates in 1971, and this technology is in use in almost every major airport worldwide today.

Process

Bags are entered into the baggage handling system when an airline agent, or self-check system, assigns each of them a tag with a unique ten-digit

barcode A barcode or bar code is a method of representing data in a visual, Machine-readable data, machine-readable form. Initially, barcodes represented data by varying the widths, spacings and sizes of parallel lines. These barcodes, now commonly ref ...

. Airlines are also now incorporating RFID chips into tags to track bags in real time and reduce the number of mishandled bags. The baggage handling system then scans and sorts the bags by airline, usually by means of Automatic Tag Readers (ATR). A series of diverters along the conveyor belt then directs the bags through the baggage handling area. Although a baggage handling system's primary function is the sorting and transportation of bags, a typical system also: * Detects bag jams * Regulates input volume, to avoid overloading the system * Balances loads, to evenly distribute bags between conveyor subsystems * Counts and tracks bags

Security

After

September 11, 2001 The September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing the first two into ...

, the majority of airports around the world began to implement baggage screening directly into baggage handling systems. These systems are referred to as "Checked Baggage Inspection System" by the

Transportation Security Administration The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is an agency of the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that has authority over the security of transportation systems within and connecting to the United States. It was created ...

(TSA) in the US, where bags are fed directly into Explosive Detection System (EDS) machines. A CBIS can sort baggage based on each bag's security status assigned by an EDS machine or by a security screening operator.

References

External links

How Baggage Handling Works (howstuffworks.com)
{{Commercial air travel Aircraft ground handling Air freight Luggage