The thought of venturing off on your well-earned summer vacation with your new luggage set has filled you with nervous excitement for weeks. You’ve been counting down the days, the hours and the minutes, and the day has finally arrived. You’ve got your tickets and passports, the kids have their mini wheelie suitcases, and the taxi has just arrived to ferry you to the airport. You lock the front door and say goodbye to your home for the next fortnight. Then the doubt and worries set in. What if your luggage gets lost at the airport? You’re sure you read a story about how one back pack was lost amongst the transit depots of random worldwide airports for two years. Surely that can’t happen to you. To put your mind at ease, let’s take a look at exactly what happens to your luggage when you check it in at the airport.
After you hand your bag over at the check-in desk, it begins its logistical journey to your holiday destination. Your labeled piece of luggage will be placed on a massive network of conveyor belts before being stored in a holding depot to await the arrival of the plane that it will be traveling on. Massive air caster decks enable heavy loads of bags weighing up to 850lbs to be transported from one section of the airport to another. These large versatile platforms rotate and maneuver in a surprisingly nimble fashion to enable the most efficient transportation of your luggage.
When your bag is ready to depart the holding bay, it is loaded onto the network of conveyor belts, and the barcode on the sticker that the check-in staff member secured to your bag is scanned. This informs the handler of the correct route to set your luggage on so that it arrives ready to be loaded onto the correct Motrec vehicle (or whichever vehicles the airport uses). After whizzing through the conveyor belt network, your bag will arrive at another holding bay. But it’s not here for long. Expertly trained baggage handlers then load your suitcase onto carts ready to be driven outside to the cargo holds of the aircraft. When your bag loaded carefully into the cargo of the plane, you are then ready to take your seats aboard the same aircraft.
The technology of barcoding enables a vast amount of information to be attached to your luggage including your name, home address and the destination airport that you are flying to. It is incredibly rare that luggage gets lost. Although the numbers may seem great, when you think about all of the baggage that goes through airports every day of the week, the percentage is actually fairly small.
So enjoy the vacation that you have been looking forward to all year. Allow yourself to daydream about the lazy days sunbathing on the beach, evenings enjoying the local entertainment, the leisurely swims in the hotel infinity pool and the regional cuisine that you will get to experience. When you land at your destination, you can vacate the plane safely in the knowledge that your luggage will be there to greet you.
