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Aviation History
1989
1989 - 0094.PDF
Above the last frustrating wait before leaving the terminal; passengers congregate round the carousel. Below Tags for Pan Am baggage, showing the concentric-square OCR symbol WWW SAS ID1 IE3 n u of the label is read. Organic OCR can be seen in operation at Gatwick's north terminal. Each flight has a two-digit number assigned to it. When the bag comes down from the check-in desk, this large number is seen by an operator at a small console, on which has been noted which chute has been assigned a particular number. The operator then simply presses the appro priate button. Voice recognition was going to be used, but noise levels in the handling area made this impractical. This system uses individual tilting pallets, rather than a continuous belt. The major advantage of such a system is that it elimi nates the need for pushers. Once a bag is known to be aboard a particular pallet, there is no need to monitor the speed of the belt or use photoelectric devices to monitor its progress. The system tilts the pallet when it is opposite the appropriate chute. One of the main drawbacks is that, if the appropriate chute is already full, with bags arriving faster than the baggage sorters can cope with them, the bag will have to go to a spare "faulty sort" chute. This happens because the bags are fed on to the pallets from above. Feeding such a system from the side is more difficult. Such an overhead system means that, if the chute is full, the bag cannot go round again for another try, because all the pallets have to be empty as they pass under the over head feed. A belt system does not suffer from this problem, and is usually fed from the side. More complex monitoring is required, however, in case a bag has toppled over or slid around the belt as the belt negotiates a gradient. Further problems await passenger termi nal planners as 1992 approaches, with the prospect of a sudden change in the classi fication of many flights. Even worse is the confusion engendered by the British attitude to the single European market. Will border controls be relaxed? At the moment this seems unlikely, but, in time, instead of Gatwick having its present 50/50 foreign/domestic split, virtually all flights could be labelled "domestic"—within Europe. Any baggage changing its classi fication from international to domestic, in either direction, passes through customs. If border controls are relaxed there will be a much greater need for automated transfer. Tighter rules After the Air India disaster in June 1985, which was attributed to sabotage, Icao ruled that each piece of baggage on a flight had to be positively reconciled with a passenger, and that the captain of the aircraft had to be satisfied that the passenger was on board. This law, Icao annex 17, section 514, came into force at the end of 1987. Airport author ities have established various procedures for ensuring that this occurs. With non-containerised luggage this often means that the luggage sits besides the aircraft and is loaded aboard as the relevant passenger passes the boarding point. With containerised luggage, a record must be kept of where in the container each bag is. This means that a passenger checking in or board ing late may not be able to travel with his baggage. If this happens, a special procedure is invoked, whereby the luggage is X-rayed and sealed while it is in the terminal. This sealed bag is then loaded into the aircraft. No system is perfect. Lost baggage costs the industry $22 billion a year and accounts for $0-18 of each passenger's ticket. lata and Sita run a system called Bagtrack, and System One runs Easitrak. These attempt to do a spot of sleuthing to trace the passenger. Bag tags may have come off, a passenger may have given a false name and, perhaps inad vertently, an incorrect destination. These agencies work by opening the bag and seeing if it contains any clues to the passenger's identity. Baggage handling is not all dull. Weird and wonderful objects have to be loaded aboard aircraft. The worst time of the year is winter. Despite all the technological advances, no-one has invented a conveyor system that can handle skis. These and other outsize objects, which can include chest freezers, colour televisions, and automobile spares (including engines which people insist on classifying as personal luggage), have to go down a lift and be taken to the aircraft's side by hand. Baggage handlers pray for one thing: passenger luggage in a precisely defined size, shape, and weight. E 36 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL, 14 January 1989
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