Birmingham International Airport - Sort Allocation Computer System

Highlights

As part of a major upgrade of the baggage handling system at Terminal One at Birmingham International Airport, MacDonald Humfrey (Automation) Ltd. introduced the first ‘Sort Allocation Computer System’ to be installed at Birmingham International Airport.

The ‘SAC’ was developed by MacDonald Humfrey (Automation) Ltd. with an automatic interface suite to the ARINC and SITA systems to offer Birmingham International Airport full flexibility.

Following on from the initial design concept MacDonald Humfrey (Automation) Ltd. developed a full ‘Functional Design Specification’ for the solution to ensure the new system offered not just full sortation capabilities but also incorporated the capability of total baggage/passenger statistical analysis.

The principle features of the new Sort Allocation Computer are listed as follows: -

• Scalable up to 25 million passengers per annum throughput with option for higher availability.
• Interface suite for interfacing SAC to SITA Bag Message and ARYNC host systems.
• Automatic updating of flight information from airport FIDS system to ensure changes to flight schedule are effected by the baggage handling system.
• Powerful sortation algorithm to sort baggage by flight, class, onward destination or any other field contained within the IATA Baggage Source Message.
• Accepts IATA Baggage Source and Baggage Processed Message formats.
• Configurable to generate Baggage Processed messages back to host systems.
• Automatic allocation sort position based on default allocations for carrier and / or individual flight.
• Performance trending for bags within in system time threshold and outside of in system time threshold, Level 1, 2, 3 & 4 bags, rush bags, late bags, short shipped bags early bags etc.