Baggage handling?

Discover the journey your luggage takes while you pass through security and browse the duty free before boarding

You don’t just wave goodbye to your friends or family at the airport – you also say farewell to your luggage. After you’ve had it weighed and the tag has been attached, the last you see of your possessions is your bag disappearing from sight on a conveyor belt into the labyrinth of the baggage handling system. You won’t be reunited with it until you reach your destination (hopefully). But how does your bag navigate the hidden network of bags, travelling at high speed along thousands of rollers and motors? It all comes down to that tag that you wrap around the handle.

Your baggage is placed in a tray, which is loaded on a tray chassis. Each of these components have a unique code and the computer system pairs the two different numbers together. In the same way a railway track has moveable points that can manually change the train’s course, an airport baggage system has a central computer that tracks the baggage and can change points in the track to move it to the correct destination.

However, the job of the baggage handling system isn’t just to get suitcases onto the correct flights – it is the responsibility of these systems and the staff that run them to screen each bag to make sure they do not contain anything that might compromise flight safety. Each piece of luggage will pass through several stages of imaging, including X-rays, as it travels through the airport to the gate to be manually loaded by staff, before – hours later – it’s unloaded at the destination airport and placed on a carousel waiting for you to come and pick it up.