Matching baggage system investment with airport growth

Matching baggage system investment with airport growth. At what point should a growing airport consider moving away from conveyor based sortation. As the world’s airports continue to see annual passenger growth of around 10%, the number of airports where larger capacity sortation is required is growing. Smaller airports will normally have a baggage system based around conveyors and make-up using carousels. These systems will typically vary from having some level of automated sortation allowing some sortation to the ability to provide full sortation. This approach to baggage systems has its limitations but the right support and targeted investment can provide surprisingly high capacities. For small airports delaying the move to more complex sortation approaches delivers a number of benefits including: Delaying major capital investment – replacing a whole baggage system can cost several million through to tens of millions. Delaying this investment can provide significant opportunity for airports to invest in other areas first such as passenger experience or other capacity enablers Reduced maintenance burden – conveyors, vertical sorts, carousels are all relatively easy components of a baggage system to maintain, this enables airports to employee smaller more cost effective maintenance teams rather than the larger more qualified teams required for sorters or cart systems Reduced energy costs – On demand running conveyors can be very energy efficient while sorters require to run continuously using much higher levels of energy Reduced manufacturer reliance – due to the reduced complexity both in the physical components and controls software conveyor based systems […]

T4 ABF Baggage Facility

Construction of a new building to enclose a recently extended baggage facility at Terminal 4, Heathrow, for Vinci Group. Production Design period 26 weeks. Project on site now – Jan 2013– Approx £5m. Architectural and civils production design and construction support services. T4 ABF is an existing baggage facility, adjacent to the aircraft stands. The facility had recently been extended to meet the growth in passenger numbers, and a temporary scaffold structure had been provided to protect the nely extedned baggage facility and the operators. The project involved constructing a new building over the baggage facility, linking to the existing building, and forming a new blast wall at the aircraft stand lboundary. The baggage facility was to remain fully operational during the construction phase, requiring attention to detail to ensure the correct interfaces with the existing structures and operational areas were maintained.