At a small airport, baggage handling is typically simple and manual. Imagine a regional airport with one or two flights per hour and a single low baggage conveyor. The “chain” might look like this: you check in your bag, an agent scans your tag, and the suitcase is placed on a belt that leads almost directly to the aircraft or to a single sorting table. Baggage handlers then load it by hand. There might be no complex sortation – often bags for one flight just go on one cart. On arrival, bags come off the plane and go to one carousel.
Such airports rely on flexible staffing: the same person might check bags and later retrieve bags at the carousel. Because volumes are small, sophisticated equipment (like multi-trolley sorters) isn’t needed. The trade-off is that there is less automation and some tasks are labor-intensive (like manually rolling carts or lifting bags). This can slow things down if many flights converge. However, a simpler process also means fewer things that can go wrong. According to industry experts, measuring baggage performance by a single ratio (bags mishandled per passenger) isn’t fair here, because operations are straightforward. In hubs and large airports, a bag passes many hands – while in a small point-to-point setup, it often goes straight on/off the plane. In short, small airports prioritize flexibility and personal handling, and miss fewer steps (though a broken belt or cart at a small airport can have an outsized effect).
