Airport’s new baggage hall operational
YLW can now process up to 900 bags per hour, double previous load
The Okanagan Weekend
Two years of expansion and renovation. Thirty-six thousand square feet. State-ofthe art X-ray machines. And 700 metres of conveyor belts going every which way.
It's all resulted in the cavernous, new baggage hall at Kelowna airport.
“This is the back end of the system behind the airline counters that the public doesn’t see,” said airport director Sam Samaddar. “It’s the big piece in the centre that keeps everything running.”
While regular passengers will never get a glimpse of the operation, the media did get a sneak peek during the baggage hall grand opening this week. When you check your suitcase at an airline counter, a sticker with barcodes is affixed to your bag.
It’s tossed on the conveyor belt beside the airline agent and begins its journey — hopefully to your final destination.
The conveyor behind the check-in counters is just a tiny fraction of the full length of belts that will see your bag ultimately onto a plane. After a suitcase disappears into a hole in the wall, 700 metres of conveyor takes bags through screening.
Barcodes are being automatically read along the way, sorting suitcases so they arrive at designated spaces for ground crews to load on the appropriate cart to zip across the tarmac and your plane.
All X-ray machines were replaced in the renovation and the bigger, better system can process 900 bags per hour, up from the previous 450 bags.
The system works almost exactly in reverse when your plane lands and the barcodes on your luggage directs bags over conveyors and onto the baggage pickup carousel in the arrivals area.
“The new baggage hall is part of our broad 10-year $92-million improvement program,” said Samaddar. “It started four years ago when the new customs area was put in international arrivals.”
Since then, a main-terminal renovation has seen new airline check-in counters and offices front the hidden baggage hall.
The pre-board screening area has four security lines and scanners. Depending on how busy it is, generally one, two or three lines are open. However, during peak times, the fourth line is operational.
The departure lounge has also received the expansion and facelift treatment.
The two previous gift shops have been combined into one open-concept retail area, the wine shop and White Spot restaurant maintain their spaces and new Subway and Tim Hortons will open by month’s end.
There are now 10 gates, up from eight, accessed from the departures lounge.
To accommodate the 10 planes loaded at those gates, the apron has been expanded and reinforced for some of the bigger planes that come and go from Kelowna.
Over the next couple of years, the second phase of departure lounge expansion will take place allowing more space between gates and funnelling domestic arrivals to the south end of the terminal so people don’t have to walk as far from plane to the exit.
“All this work is driven by growth,” said Samaddar. “We need to do this to keep up with demand.”
When the airport started the 10-year improvement program in 2010, it was called The Drive to 1.6 Million, in reference to that being the number of passengers using the airport annually by 2020.
In 2016, the milestone was already broken with 1.7 million passengers and a new record is expected to be set this year.
The airport has 66 departures and arrivals daily on nine airlines.
Constant growth likely means Kelowna airport will never really stop expanding.