Zurich Airport commences expansion and refurbishment of its baggage handling system

Instead of the traditional spade, shortly after midday on 19 March 2018, a digger clawed into the roof of the former air traffic control building at the northern end of the airport complex. This marked the official start of the construction works for expanding and refurbishing the baggage handling system at Zurich Airport.

Zurich Airport is a complex transport hub where many operations take place behind the scenes out of view of passengers. One such example is the baggage handling system which will be expanded over the coming years by an area of around 30,000 m2. Running underground, it connects up the individual terminal buildings and helps ensure that departing and transfer passengers’ baggage is reliably conveyed to the correct aircraft.

Expansion and upgrading of the airport-wide baggage handling system has become necessary firstly to keep pace with the ever-increasing number of passengers in the coming years, and secondly because more space will be needed in future for larger security screening equipment featuring the latest technology. The fact that essential parts of the existing system will be coming to the end of their service life from 2022 was another key factor in favour of the project. Since a seamlessly functioning baggage system is vital for an airport, all building work will be carried out during ongoing operations.

Among other things, the baggage system expansion project also involves optimising the existing sorting system, building a new early bag store, and adding an extension to increase capacity. The investment costs amount to around 470 million Swiss francs. The expanded and upgraded baggage system is due to come on stream in various stages, with completion of the overall project scheduled for 2025.