Kelowna airport renovation keeps baggage moving

A $38 million renovation at YLW has doubled screening capacity for outbound luggage.

X-ray scanning machines can now process 900 bags an hour and are built to expand to 1,500/ hour at the Kelowna International Airport.

The improvement will keep flights on time, help increase flight capacity and meet U.S. safety guidelines, according to project manager Henry Castorf.

“It creates efficiency for the baggage handlers, allows YLW to grow and ensures that passenger baggage travels on the flights that they do without getting hung up in the process anywhere along the way,” Castorf said.

The baggage hall has also expanded to 36,000 sq ft.

“Previously, we were challenged, in terms of the space we had to process outbound baggage,” Castorf said. “We now have more than twice the processing capacity on the x-rays and probably about three times the capacity we had previously inside the bag hall here itself.”

While The Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA) paid for the x-ray machines, two CT X5800, the airport authority paid for the conveyor belt and building expansion using funds from the Airport Improvement Fee fund (AIF).

The AIF is a $15 fee added to every outbound ticket at YLW.

“These screening machines take an image of the inside of the bag to determine whether it’s safe to go on board an aircraft,” he said. “This machine will make a decision as to whether it’s good to go or not.”

If a bag is flagged by the machine, it can be manually screened or opened by security staff.

So far in 2017, more than 1.5 million passengers have traveled through YLW and all previous records are expected to be broken.

In August alone, YLW saw 179,153 passengers, a monthly total record for the Okanagan facility. That compares to 160,846 during the same month a year earlier and is more than the 166,537 December record in 2016.

There were 1,732,113 passengers who traveled through the Kelowna airport in 2016.