In February 1994 Denver ran the first large-scale test of the baggage system at its new airport. Reporters, photographers and television crews were allowed to watch. According to The New York Times, bags “went flying, tumbling and bursting open, with some sliced in half,” and the press saw “smashed baggage and airborne underwear.” In one test, smudged bar codes sent about two-thirds of the bags off to be sorted by hand.
The airport had been due to open in October 1993. In August 1990, a consultant hired by the city had warned that an automated baggage system for the whole airport could probably not be built and tested in time. The city first chose an ordinary system of tugs and carts. Then, after United Airlines agreed in June 1991 to sign a 30-year lease, it decided on an automated system for the entire airport, the option the consultant’s report said carried the greatest risk to the opening date. The contract was worth $193 million.
The date began to slip. The first two delays, to December 1993 and then to March 1994, came because construction wasn’t finished, according to federal auditors. After the failed test, the mayor, Wellington Webb, moved the opening again, to May 15. “I will not risk Denver’s reputation on an inadequately tested baggage system,” he said. In May the opening was postponed indefinitely. By the auditors’ account, that delay and the one before it were caused solely by the baggage system. Meanwhile the city was paying for two airports. Running the old one while carrying the debt on the new one left a deficit of $18 million to $19 million a month.
In July 1994, with the contractor unable to say when its system would work, the city changed course. It set a new opening date, February 28, 1995, and decided to build a conventional baggage system as a backup, then estimated to cost about $51 million. In November it formally released the contractor from providing an integrated system to all concourses, and cut the required capacity from 65 bags per minute per line to 30.
The airport opened on February 28, 1995. Tugs and carts served every concourse. The automated system handled only United’s bags on Concourse B, and there only normal-size bags on outbound flights and oversized bags such as skis on inbound ones. Months earlier, the auditors had estimated that if the airport opened at the end of February, the delay would cost about $360 million, counting lost income. Their verdict: “it would have been cheaper to plan for and build an alternative system from the start.”