Final Project Background

Background

Quoted to be the world’s largest and most advanced automated technology, the airport baggage handling system at the new Denver International Airport became one of the most infamous instances of project failure that developed ability to misplace a good percentage of everything that wandered into its path.

Faced with need for greater capacity, the Denver city has built a massive new airport. With room for a total of 12 major runways, the airport covers over 140km2, and has the capacity to handle more than 50 million passengers annually. In many ways the New Denver Airport represents a state of the art that will cement Denver as an air transportation hub.

A mechanized baggage system was a critical component at the heart of the New Denver Airport.  The unique "Integrated Automated Baggage Handling System" was originally designed to reduce aircraft turnover time to as little as half-an-hour and integrate all 3 concourses into one system. The maximum profitability is achieved by maximizing the plane airtime compared to the ground time. To reduce the ground time, quick loading/unloading of baggage is very essential.

Initially, United airlines engaged BAE systems to build the automated system for Concourse A only. However, to cater to desire of the airport authorities to have baggage handling solution for the complete airport, BAE systems was awarded the contract for the entire project. Unfortunately, despite employment of BAE systems in making the baggage system a success, the project dissolved as the complexity of the project was not measured appropriately, leading to major public humiliation for everyone. Consequently, the New Denver Airport’ opening was delayed by 16 months. It cost $33m a month to maintain empty airports and interest charged on construction loans throughout the delay. Due to this delay, both the airport owners and the airlines suffer losses to the extent that the automated baggage system did not deliver the productivity and efficiency that they had bargained for.

On the opening day, the system operation appeared as a shadow of the original plan. It displayed how system crushed bags, disgorged content, and led to head-on collision of 2 carts moving at high speed. In contrast to integrating all 3 concourses into 1, the sub-standard system could serve only the outbound flights on 1 concourse. All the other baggage handling was done with just a simple conveyor belt and a fleet of tugs and carts that were hurriedly incorporated when it was evident that the failure of automated system would be inevitable.