Determination of baggage build opportunity and unit loading device storage requirements within domestic and international airport baggage hall operations

To enable airports and airlines to make best use of the new, fully and semi-automatic robotic baggage processing technologies, it is necessary to improve the utilisation of unit load devices (ULDs). ULDs are aluminium containers of various fixed sizes, as defined by the International Air Transport Association (2004), which can store passenger hold baggage within the baggage hall, the apron or on capable aircraft. This paper develops a model which determines the proportion of baggage that can be loaded into the ULDs of an outbound flight by reusing the same aircraft's ULD's from the inbound flight. The paper investigates the criticality of in-bound aircraft ‘brakes on time’ (the point in time when an arriving aircraft has taxied onto the aircraft stand, stopped and the brakes of the aircraft have been applied) relative to the departure time of the same aircraft on its next rotation, and the effect this has on both the quantity of available ULDs that can be built and the quantity that need to be stored on site. The model produces results for a range of aircraft types which will be useful to airlines and ground-handling operators seeking to make more efficient use of ULDs. More efficient use of these assets will benefit airports because of the potential to free up additional space in airside areas that already suffer from considerable degrees of congestion.