The news that four Lion Air baggage porters were recently caught systematically breaking into passenger baggage to steal valuables has no doubt made made many people paranoid about giving over their luggage to those working at Soekarno-Hatta Airport.
To gain back the public’s trust, PT Angkasa Pura II has announced that it would soon be replacing porters with an automated baggage handling system.
“This is a long term solution to prevent porters from breaking into passengers’ baggage, which often happens,” said PT Angkasa Pura II Secretary Agus Haryadi, as quoted by Tempo yesterday.
The new automated baggage handling system will render manual baggage handling obsolete and PT Angkasa Pura II say it will come equipped with state-of-the-art security systems.
It will first be available in Terminal 3 Ultimate, which is scheduled to be operational by mid-2016. The other 2 terminals will also install automated baggage handling systems after planned renovations in the coming years.
Soekarno-Hatta is actually quite behind, technologically speaking, compared to other big airports – even those in Indonesia. For instance, Kualanamu in Medan and Sultan Aji Muhammad Sulaiman in Balikpapan already have automated baggage handling systems.
To see how it could minimize manual labour, check out this video of Beumer Group’s automated baggage handling system in Helsinki Airport, Finland:
