Tribune/ Dan McGee - One worker waits while his partner, kneeling inside the belt, is about to hand him a piece of equipment. They were part of a huge crew installing the new baggage handling system at the airport.
And the average bowler brings about three balls each.
“They have their striped ball, they have their spare ball, they have their lucky ball,” said Brian Kulpin, director of marketing for the airport. “They have their lucky shoes.”
Prior to the airport’s current lobby and baggage check-in integrated remodeling project, it might have been very easy to lose some of those bowling bags. But come December this year, more than 400 cameras will be able to locate even just one “misplaced” bag right away.
On Monday, the media were invited on a rare, one-time-only tour of the RTIA’s upgrading of its high-tech airport baggage check-in (ABC) belt conveyor system for a behind-the-scenes look at how baggage check-ins will operate starting the end of this year. Construction companies are in the process of converting the airport’s former two-line check-in system to an efficient, one-stop handling of customers’ suitcases where passengers can drop off their bags at the airline counter and be on their way to their flight.
Efficiency is the key motive for the change, Kulpin said.
“You had two lines to wait in at airport before you could go on your way...and that was a really tough thing to deal with with heavy passenger days out in the lobby,” Kulpin said.
Customers formerly stood in a line to check in, receive their tickets and have their baggage ticketed with the proper destination, then dragged their luggage over to a giant Transportation Security Administration scanner. Several of those scanners, Kulpin said, took up 40 percent of the lobby.
All that has been done away with as the airport, now about 30 percent done with its baggage check-in system, is going more high-tech. Customers now only need to drop off their bags as they pick up their tickets and the airline attendant will tag the bags and place them on a belt.
The project required a remodel of the ticket lobby to integrate individual conveyor belts for each airline to accept and send baggage to the center of its house. Inside, the belts that move baggage along blue-colored tracks take no more than 15 minutes from the time the airline receptionist places the bag on the belt to twist and wind its way into screening above the floor at different heights and finally onto a carousel from which drivers can pick up the luggage and take it to the appropriate planes.
New machines can scan for oversized bags and if they identify any, they send them on a different path.
Kulpin said 80 percent of the belt, which runs about 1.3 miles, is a special “green” system for energy conservation. It’s an improvement over the old system, he said.
It’s all to help to the airport maintain a certain level of customer service, Kulpin said, even with the temporary tented lobby.
“We believe in making that all-important first and last impression on people as they come and go from the community,” Kulpin said.
The remodel for the new baggage system was done by Q&D Construction.
“We’ve had very little disruption in airline service, if any,” said Norman Dianda, owner of Q&D Construction. “The community should be proud of the airport when this is done. It will be one of the lightest in terms of security checking probably in the country today.”
The remodel of the lobby and security system, costing the airport $63 million are just one part of three major projects going on at the airport, all totaling $104 million. The other projects include the construction of a new air control tower and the Hyatt hotel. No taxpayer money is being used for these components, Kulpin said.
Dianda said all trades of the construction industry were used for this project, from masons to plumbers. Nearly all 83 companies, including subcontractors and consultants were local. All three projects have employed a total of about 300 people.
“Many northern Nevada companies have benefited from this,” Kulpin said. “It’s putting food on people’s tables, it’s keeping people employed, it’s keeping people in their homes. In these tough economic times, we’re proud that we’re going to have a new high-tech security system, but we’re always proud that we’re keeping people working.”
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