ABSTRACT
Baggage handling at an airport involves three main functions: moving bags from the check-in area to the departure gates; transferring bags from one gate to another; and moving bags from the arrival gates to the baggage-claim area. This chapter presents the main issues of baggage handling at the airport such as the management of the baggage at the airport sorting facility and baggage transfer methods. The principal objective of the pier assignment problem is to assign a list of prescheduled flights to available piers in the baggage-handling facility while satisfying the operation requirements. The transfer baggage is classified further, based on the departure time of its next flight, into cold baggage and hot baggage. At the sorting facility, cold baggage is accumulated with the transfer baggage arriving from other flights and the baggage starting at this airport, and then transferred to its connecting outbound flights by transportation carts.
