Calgary airport gets state-of-the-art baggage handling for domestic flights

The newest improvements at Calgary International Airport are ones the average traveller won’t ever see and will likely not even notice when they’re working well.

The airport’s domestic terminal has a new state-of-the-art baggage-handling system.

“It’s been a project that’s been under works for the last three years,” said Ivonne Gamboa, director of terminal construction at the Calgary Airport Authority.

The upgraded system matches each piece of luggage to a tray-like tote. That tote is individually marked, coded and has an RFID chip in it to allow the tracking of each piece of baggage as it makes its way from check-in to plane or back.

The serpentine track system that carries the totes only activates when there is cargo to move. Each roughly metre-long section of track shuts down when there is no baggage to be conveyed.

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“We ran with a traditional conveyor system for many years,” Gamboa said. “With a traditional conveyor system, our energy consumption was quite high, as the system is running 24-7, and there is no ability to track the baggage at any given point of the journey.

“With the state-of-the-art baggage system that we are introducing, we are bringing Calgary to be among the most-advanced airports in the world.”

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The same type of baggage-handling system went online in the new international terminal during its grand opening on Oct. 31, 2016.

The new domestic baggage system will carry its first bags on July 24, 2018.

Gamboa also said that in addition to reducing any mis-routing of baggage, airline passengers can expect to get their bags faster upon arrival, including oversized baggage.

“The reduction of the travel time and the reliability that you have with this new system will drastically improve the travel time for the bags.”

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It’s just one of 16 projects in the airport’s $400-million “connectivity program,” through which the airport expects to double its baggage capacity to 8,000 bags per hour and improve its baggage-handling system energy consumption by 60 per cent.

Visitors can also expect to see newly renovated check-in areas in the domestic terminal.