Process
When baggage is checked in at the ticket counter or with a sky cap (where it receives a bag tag indicating the passenger's itinerary), it is often placed onto a moving bag belt which carries the baggage to the bag room. This is where numerous checked bags are sorted so that they will be loaded onto the proper flight. The bag tag which was previously affixed to the baggage during check-in is then read by a baggage handler and placed into the proper bag cart (usually a 4-wheeled trailer) or Unit Load Device (ULD; a machine-loadable container). The bag cart or ULD is then eventually pulled from the bag room by a bag tug and out to the aircraft for loading by baggage handlers.
In addition to "pushing" an aircraft from the terminal gate (with a "push back" or "tow motor") to position it for engine start and eventual taxi, baggage handlers also may tow aircraft to and from another gate or to a "remote" or RON ("remain over night") parking area . There will be a mechanic in the flight deck 'riding the brakes', who communicates with ATC ground control (for movement clearance), and operates of the APU ("auxiliary power unit"), brakes, lights, while the agent will operate the tow-tractor. In some union negotiated airlines or stations this job could also be done by the baggage handler.
Read more about this topic: Baggage Handler
Famous quotes containing the word process:
“That which endures is not one or another association of living forms, but the process of which the cosmos is the product, and of which these are among the transitory expressions.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“Like a prophet, you are possibly teaching us about the workings of the divine mind, but in the process you are ruining the human mind, dear friend.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“If thinking is like perceiving, it must be either a process in which the soul is acted upon by what is capable of being thought, or a process different from but analogous to that. The thinking part of the soul must therefore be, while impassable, capable of receiving the form of an object; that is, must be potentially identical in character with its object without being the object. Mind must be related to what is thinkable, as sense is to what is sensible.”
—Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)