Total Worldwide Baggage Handling Capability #1

Ethiopia’s Addis Ababa Bole International Airport is to solve its main baggage throughput issues during peak periods with an upgraded Departures BHS that features additional systems and storage to cater for Early Bag Store (EBS) and Transfer baggage.

The airport operators, Ethiopia Airlines Enterprises (EAE), has awarded the £2.5 million BHS project to EBS and Transfer baggage specialist, Daifuku Logan, part of the global Daifuku ABH Division, and is anticipating the upgraded and expanded Departures system to be fully operational by April 2014.

Daifuku Logan supplied a baggage system over 12 years ago when the airport processed around one million flight passengers a year. Since then the number of passengers using Addis Abba Bole has risen to six million and is growing. The airport estimates 50% of these are transit passengers in need of baggage transfer to a connecting flight, and more and more airline travelers are bringing bags early to the airport, creating on-going ‘clogging’ issues in processing bags during busy and peak times.

Addis Ababa is not untypical of the impact that EBS and Transfer baggage is having on normal baggage operational throughput at many other international airports around the globe.

As a result, EAE brought in three leading baggage handling system integrators to put forward design solutions to enable the airport to provide faster throughput. Daifuku Logan’s project and design team for Addis Ababa used a key element, its proven and advanced computer simulation programme, to determine the most effective and reliable solution.

Daifuku Logan’s winning proposal called for the addition of a system that would handle the early bags and transfer bags, and to provide a facility for the storage of early bags, thereby freeing up the system and preventing clogging during normal periods.

Ron Osborne, Managing Director of Daifuku Logan, said of the winning design: “Rather than propose faster sortation, or tighter window timeframes for accepting baggage at Check-in, we went for the option of additional facilities to cater for EBS and transfer baggage, which is more than 50% of the airport’s entire baggage throughput. The airport accepted the benefits that this scheme would bring and they outweighed the higher costs and reliability and expense issues of faster baggage handling.”

In addition to the expansion of the Departures system, EAE is placing an additional £1 million contract with Daifuku Logan to refurbish the existing baggage handling equipment. This is an essential exercise that will ensure that the upgraded system will have the improved level of reliability required to meet the requirements of the system upgrade.

Daifuku Logan has already carried out a comprehensive mechanical and electrical survey that will provide the basis for the refurbishment programme.