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Comment by AustinGrandt | Hacker News Reader

Previous baggage handler turned software dev here. Looks like you are targeting the bag room right now which is the best spot to start to prove the concept. It was surprising to me how manual the entire loading & sorting process was when I worked for the airlines.

I'm curious if there's any roadmap eventually to get this out to the ramp itself. Most of the back injuries seemed to happen in the bin itself because you have to often hunch/be on your knees in a bin tossing 50+ pound bags. I know airlines would probably be very hesitant to have any new equipment around their planes but just curious if there's any discussion around that.

Other side note, I also used to work in Cargo and always thought there could be way more efficient ways of loading loose packages that are on every flight and this seems to be a great possibility for those as well.

Awesome work & will keep tabs on it!

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Thanks for the feedback!

John B was obviously aware from previous experience what a manual and injury prone process this was, but I've also been really surprised as I've dived deeper into airport operations myself.

Bagroom is definitely what we're targeting first - being indoors (usually) is a huge plus, and lets us focus on the manipulation part of the problem without going fully mobile yet.

That said, we're definitely targeting tarmac/ramp operations, particularly between a TUG/PowerStow and narrow-body bag carts. Inside the bin is much trickier but we agree it's the least ergonomic part of the job, you just can't move a massive industrial arm in and out of a plane very easily. We have it on our longer-term roadmap, though, and intend to leverage the baggage dynamics data we collect everywhere else to give us a head start on the packing and manipulation problems there, just with a different mechanism.

Cargo packing is a huge area of interest for us! Particularly around optimizing weight distribution in loaded planes, or just optimizing packing efficiency in general.

Why don't they just push the loaded rack into the airplane?

Weight of the rack is "wasted weight" on the flight, and that costs money.

Each plane is different, so the racks either waste space or have to have tons of different ones.

Many planes don't have easy big doors for racks (the ones you've probably seen are for designated cargo jets - like this: https://www.aircargo.ups.com/media/Containers-Pallets/upsair... )

And now even if you solve all the above, you still have to load the bags into the rack.

Why not rear-load like military aircraft and avoid that 90º turn? Then you could have a hull-shaped hopper to drop the bags in, so they are tetris'd together in the right geometry before you get to the ramp. Roll the hopper in, have a pez-despenser style pusher so as you withdraw the hopper, the bags are left behind in the aircraft?

Step one would be "get Boeing or Airbus to design, build, certify, and sell thousands of a significantly different airplane model".

That's a big hurdle for an airline to start climbing now to someday maybe start saving money on bag loading in many years.

surely someone thought of this before though. There must be a "why not" answer already.

It's expensive and difficult to put a large door on the front or back of a plane, resulting in inefficiencies or maintenance headaches.

The planes that DO have them are almost always military planes not used for other things, or very large jumbos (search 747 cargo or C-5 galaxy).

Almost all other planes are optimized for passengers (the cargo space in even a largish jet may be too short to stand up in, for example).

They do for larger planes; but commuter jets and most narrow bodies don’t have enough space in the belly for that.

Seems like someone needs to invent a rack that can easily change size based on the plane being loaded

ah, liquid metal, why didn't I think of that!

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