In message , at 20:12:40 on Sat, 29
Mar 2008, Brian Watson remarked:
"See this bag with this label saying that it goes on that plane?"

"Yes"

"It goes on that plane."

"Oh, right."

Not that difficult.

Problems seem to arise when the bags arrive faster [1] than you can put
them into the trucks/containers that take them across the apron. That's
what appears to have gone wrong at T5, with bags from check-in arriving
faster than they could be got off the belts. The sorting into *which*
plane is the easy part, as you say.

Plus there are frilly things you probably haven't seen very often, like
bags marked for First Class passengers or those with short transit
times, being loaded last and taken off first. And generally sorting the
bags into "send to baggage claim", "send to an onward plane", "send to a
different airline" or even "send to x-ray because it looks suspicious".

[1] If they are coming off the plane too fast on a conveyor, it's not
unknown for them to simply fall several feet onto the concrete, rather
than be "caught" by someone whose job it is to throw them into a truck.
--
Roland Perry