Sea-Tac Airport to build $320 million baggage system

Hey it's the lead story from my newscast tonight!

I find it interesting that 30% of the cost is in TSA screening equipment. The whole thing belies the explosive growth at Sea-Tac.

My big unanswered question is... do they have to remove the old system before they install the new one and if so... do they just manually sort the bags for the time the installation takes?

Its been a few years since I regularly used Sea-Tac ( whatever happened to using "Scoop" Jackson as the Airpirts namesake?).

I wonder if spending this much on a Hi-Tech Baggage System is a prudent use of scarce Govt. transportation funds? ( remember the mess @ the new Denver Airport when it opened?)

Including the TSA makes it an abomination!

Bob Dylan said:

Its been a few years since I regularly used Sea-Tac ( whatever happened to using "Scoop" Jackson as the Airpirts namesake?).

I wonder if spending this much on a Hi-Tech Baggage System is a prudent use of scarce Govt. transportation funds? ( remember the mess @ the new Denver Airport when it opened?)

Including the TSA makes it an abomination!

Click to expand...

Wow there's an obscure piece of history. The airport was named after Jackson in 1983. Tacoma felt insulted by having their name taken off the airport (they provided a significant chunk of change to help build the airport initially) and the citizens of both cities preferred the old name by a margin of 5 to 1. The port restored the Sea-Tac name in 1984.

I actually think this is a prudent investment. There are currently 6 baggage systems (one for each terminal) and they're all past or nearing the end of their useful lives. Bag jams occur frequently and several have taken more than an hour to clear. This would create one unified system.

The money wouldn't be coming from the federal government (save for the cost of the new TSA equipment), but rather from the passenger facility charge that fliers pay.

Sea-Tac has seen an explosion of growth the past few years. The airport has always been a hub for Alaska Airlines, which continues to grow and become a bigger player in domestic air travel. That's growth comes as Delta makes Sea-Tac their gateway to Asia (Delta says it's cheaper to have passengers connect in Seattle than flying them to Narita and having them connect there).

Delta is coming on strong in SEA; nice if you're a Delta fan.

Thanks for the update on SEA-TAC Ricky! As you can tell I'm old!

Love that the Senior Rail Fare with the Oyster Card is .75 cents to Seattle, even if its a long walk from the Terminals to the Platform!

That's awesome. I was really impressed with how well everything was connected (by tram) while there a couple weeks ago. It would be nice to have something similar for the baggage.