$7M PSP baggage system needs replacing after 1 year

Palm Springs International Airport is facing issues with its multi-million dollar baggage handling system, despite it being just more than 1 year old.

Last week, Palm Springs was named one of the fastest growing airports in the country. PSP officials project 2022 to be the busiest year on record. Some of that growth, airport officials said, was unexpected – and is now causing baggage issues that is costing the city hundreds of thousands of dollars.

"My girlfriends and I are doing a weekend trip," said Dani Schenone on Friday as travelers for Labor Day weekend took to the skies.

Schenone said her hopes were high for smooth sailing to her destination. "I was kind of scared for my luggage getting lost to be honest with you," she said.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes at the airport, officials are looking for quick fixes for its overwhelmed baggage handling system.

"What essentially is the problem is the design of the system," said Harry Barrett, executive director of Palm Springs International Airport speaking at a July Airport Commission meeting. "There are some physical constraints that are making a challenging for the system to deliver bags... That's whats been causing the backlog at the ticket counter."

In a March meeting, Barrett said he believed the system should be able to handle 2,500 bags per hour.

But city officials say the system is reaching capacity at about 700-800 bags per hour. At peak times, they say baggage is bottlenecking.

Last August, just more than a year ago, Palm Springs city officials celebrated the airport's new $36 million renovation project that included an expansion to the ticket lobby and what officials at the time called a "state-of-the-art" outbound baggage system, which Barrett said cost about $7 million.

In Thursday night's Palm Springs city council meeting, city leaders without discussion approved spending more than $700,000 over the next 7 months to pay personnel to "manually move baggage," as to not clog up the system – a "labor intensive" process officials said "will need to be continued year-over-year."

That's a short-term solution airport commissioners said can get them through a year, or two at most – but for the long haul, the whole system will need to be replaced. "We are likely to have to go into another construction project to remedy," Barrett said.

For now, commissioners said passengers will be asked to arrive 2 hours ahead of their departure, or their bags could be left behind.

"That's really bad for our brand," one commissioner said. "2 hours at Palm Springs in advance is just really eye-popping."

In the meantime, city officials are exploring whether the vendor of the baggage handling system could be liable.