An Airport Baggage Sorting System using PLC

  • Unique Paper ID: 199621
  • Volume: 12
  • Issue: 11
  • PageNo: 14616-14620
  • Abstract:
  • Baggage handling breaks airports faster than almost anything else on the ground. A single peak-hour sorting failure cascades into delayed flights, missed connections, and compensation claims that stack up quickly. Manual sorting can't keep pace with modern passenger volumes it’s slow, error-prone, and collapses under pressure. This paper proposes an automated baggage carrier system built around PLC control and sensor-driven conveyor mechanisms. The system runs photoelectric sensors, barcode and RFID identification modules, and motorized diverters under a ladder logic program that makes every routing decision in under a millisecond. The entire control architecture was built in Siemens TIA Portal and tested inside Factory I/O's real-time simulation environment, where the PLC ran against a physics-accurate virtual conveyor without knowing the difference. Sorting accuracy improved, manual intervention dropped, and the design held up under concurrent baggage loads without a single misroute.

Copyright & License

Copyright © 2026 Authors retain the copyright of this article. This article is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

BibTeX

@article{199621,
        author = {Moinul Islam and Paul K Cherry and Krithika P Nagarajan and G. Elavel},
        title = {An Airport Baggage Sorting System using PLC},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2026},
        volume = {12},
        number = {11},
        pages = {14616-14620},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=199621},
        abstract = {Baggage handling breaks airports faster than almost anything else on the ground. A single peak-hour sorting failure cascades into delayed flights, missed connections, and compensation claims that stack up quickly. Manual sorting can't keep pace with modern passenger volumes it’s slow, error-prone, and collapses under pressure. This paper proposes an automated baggage carrier system built around PLC control and sensor-driven conveyor mechanisms. The system runs photoelectric sensors, barcode and RFID identification modules, and motorized diverters under a ladder logic program that makes every routing decision in under a millisecond. The entire control architecture was built in Siemens TIA Portal and tested inside Factory I/O's real-time simulation environment, where the PLC ran against a physics-accurate virtual conveyor without knowing the difference. Sorting accuracy improved, manual intervention dropped, and the design held up under concurrent baggage loads without a single misroute.},
        keywords = {Airport automation, baggage handling system, PLC, conveyor automation, industrial control.},
        month = {April},
        }

Cite This Article

Islam, M., & Cherry, P. K., & Nagarajan, K. P., & Elavel, G. (2026). An Airport Baggage Sorting System using PLC. International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology (IJIRT), 12(11), 14616–14620.

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