Did British Airways hire Denver International’s designer?

Posted on April 1, 2008

Denver didn’t really need a new airport but the mayor (who later was Clinton’s Transportation Secretary) scrapped the old one and pushed through a new one. The opening of the “completed” terminal was delayed by months at the cost of some millions of dollars a day because the computerized “State of the Art” baggage handling system screwed up big time - actually devouring bags instead of delivering them smoothly from plane to terminal and vise versa.

At Heathrow in London, they spent some 20 years planning a new addition to the terminal (maybe some one should introduce them to something beyond medieval methods where building a church took centuries). Problem is it seems Denver’s baggage system designer must have designed their “State of the Art” computerized baggage handling system. Maybe it is even the same one - was the non functional system removed from Denver and shipped to London?

Now their solution to their dilemma is perhaps as convoluted as taking 20 years to design and build the terminal - they hires FedEx to gather up all the mis matched luggage, haul it to Italy and then forward it on to the rightful owners.

Way back when my suggestion for Denver - while they were losing millions per day on delays was to hire a thousand people and have them line up between the concourses and the baggage claim and pass the bags - hand to hand. probably would have saved a couple million a day and might still be a better system than whatever they created to replace the “State of the Art” computerized system.

When I used to teach computer science in college - many years ago - I told my students that yes - nearly any job can be computerized, but that does not mean they should be. Perhaps baggage systems is one of those shouldn’t be computerized jobs. I am really sure that the job of greeter at Wall Mart is still safe from the computerize everything crowd and that baggage handler probably should be too.

» Filed Under general nonsense