How conveyor belts will make your travelling easier this summer

Peak holiday season is upon us! And as many of us jet off to warmer climates, it’s easy to forget everything that goes on behind the scenes in a busy airport. Running an airport is a large operation involving lots of machinery and departments working efficiently as well as in tandem. It takes a coordinated effort to get passengers and their luggage through check-in, security, boarding, flight, passport control and baggage reclaim. It’s estimated that airlines handle 4.3 billion passenger bags per year worldwide and many of those will be transported on a Chiorino conveyor belt!

A bag will start its journey at the check-in desk when it is loaded onto the first belt where it will be tagged with a barcode. It is then whisked off down a series of conveyors and diverters. This is a mammoth task in an airport such as Heathrow, the second busiest in the world that has approximately 80 million passengers every year. The baggage handling system must be able to detect bag jams, regulate the volume of bags in a section to avoid overloading, and point them to the correct gate through bag tracking. Some airlines are even incorporating RFID chips into tags to track bags in real time throughout the whole system. At the gate, the luggage is loaded onto trucks and driven to the plane, where they are transported into the hold via more conveyor belts.

Once holiday-makers have arrived in their sunny destinations, bags are loaded off the plane and another baggage handling system delivers them to the right terminal before they are launched onto the carousel to be collected by their owner. With such a complicated undertaking, it’s no surprise that airports are investing in the very best technology to increase reliability, boost efficiency and save money.

Chiorino specialise in high-quality, energy-saving and durable conveyor belts that ensure the baggage handling process runs smoothly. For more information, contact our fantastic customer service team here or give us a call on 01977 691880.