Suvarnabhumi Airport luggage system upgraded

The automatic baggage handling system at Suvarnabhumi airport has been upgraded with more data-processing capacity in a move authorities believe will solve the problem of stranded luggage. Airports of Thailand (AoT) finished the system upgrade at noon yesterday, allowing passenger luggage to again be sorted automatically by the conveyor belt system.

The data-processing capacity was increased 2.5 times, said AoT president Chotisak Asapaviriya.

On Saturday, the system failed to read about 6,700 pieces of outbound luggage, resulting in luggage being stranded in the conveyor system.

Mr Chotisak said the problem was the system could not sort luggage quickly enough because bags from other countries were tagged with excessive information that overloaded Suvarnabhumi's system.

That delayed the handling time for each bag by a few minutes and resulted in thousands of pieces piling up unsorted in one area and missing flights.

Mr Chotisak said the luggage problem at Suvarnabhumi was trivial compared with problems experienced during the initial operation of Hong Kong's Chek Lap Kok airport, where up to 100,000 pieces of luggage were not processed, forcing services to be suspended.