Heathrow Airport Transfer Baggage System

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With more than 55 million passengers per annum, London's Heathrow Airport carries more international traffic than any other airport in the world. Every year more than 20 million of them use the airport as a transfer hub, arriving on one aircraft and departing on another, never leaving the airport in the intervening period. This paper describes the design, construction, installation, and commissioning of the transfer baggage system that moves the passengers' baggage between Terminals 1 and 4 by way of a 1500 m long tunnel and shaft system. The complex project, which includes state-of-the-art high-speed baggage handling and bag security screening systems, is a fine example of multidisciplinary engineering. Technological innovation is demonstrated in the concurrent engineering of tunnelling, baggage handling, controls, and other support systems.

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Jeffcoate, R. (1997). Heathrow Airport transfer baggage system. Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers: Civil Engineering, 120(4), 142–153. DOI: 10.1680/icien.1997.29807

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