SEATAC, Wash. -- Sea-Tac Airport is in the early stages of planning a brand new baggage system that will replace the 10 miles of conveyor belts that currently take your bag from the check-in counter to the plane. Airport officials know they need to build a system that is prepared to take on even more growth due to continued increase in passenger traffic.
The biggest perk of the new system, for the customer, will be the ability to check-in at any counter in the airport.
“For the everyday passenger, with the new optimized system, you’re going to be able to check your bag anywhere in the ticket counter and it will distribute that to any airline in our system,” Sea-Tac Airport’s Ed Weitz said. “What it really saves is mishandling within the system. When you make the stuff automated, there’s less chance of a bag getting missed, getting delivered to another airline.”
Airport officials are currently in the design stages. The first phase of the construction won’t be complete until 2018 and the whole project will be done in 2023.
Sea-Tac continues to grow. In 2014, the airport served over 37 million passengers and processed 33 million bags. In 2015, it handled 42 million passengers and processed 38 million bags. At peak times, it served 140,000 passengers and 123,000 bags daily. Because of this massive demand, officials knew a new system was needed that is more secure, with better technology, and more equipped to handle the huge amount of people coming through the doors.
“As the airport has grown we’re looking for ways within the building footprint to increase capacity so that we can keep up with the millions of annual passengers at the airport,” Weitz said. “It’s going to increase the security within the bag system, the equipment needs to be replaced, it’s basically reaching its end of life so we need to get that equipment changed out to the newer technology that has better through put and we can do better screening on it.”
The entire project will cost $320 million. TSA plans to pick up nearly $100 million of that tab.
