Paradise, Baggage-Wise

The airline passenger's second greatest fear usually is for his luggage. Most of the time he hauls his bags to the counter, waits in line to have them weighed and ticketed, and watches them lurch away, neurotically convinced they will be dented beyond recognition or sent on the wrong plane to the wrong place. At the other end of a trip, he mills around in the baggage claim area, waiting for what seems like a longer time than the duration of the flight itself. Last week, at Los Angeles' new International Airport, United Air Lines launched a completely automated luggage-handling system that should relieve passengers' baggage burdens.

Developed by the Rapids-Standard Co., Inc., the electronic system shuttles baggage to a departing plane in three minutes and seven seconds, moves it off an arriving flight and to the claim area in 2 minutes. Capable of handling 1,500 passengers and 3,000 pieces of luggage an hour (figures United does not expect to realize until 1971), much of the process occurs completely underground, with not a human eye or touch involved.

The only responsibility left to the outgoing passenger is to place his luggage in individual trays on a conveyor belt, only 16 inches from the street curb. After that, the bags are tagged and weighed while still on the belt, their flight number transmitted by the ticket agent (into a binary decimal code) on a device like a small adding machine, and lifted mechanically to a massive, subterranean maze of conveyors. As they hit the main conveyor belt, the bags are moved 500 feet in one minute to an area below the loading building where they circuit slowly, for as long as 24 hours, until their flight is called. Once the flight is ready, electronic scanners, which "read" the numbers on the luggage, pick out the bags to go on the plane, also trigger switches sending the luggage to the aircraft.

For incoming flights, a conveyor moving at 500 feet per minute sweeps bags along the belt to the arrival room, where two dumping carts spill luggage to be claimed. The passenger, unless he is on fire, cannot beat his bag to the claim area.

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