POV: Follow the Path of Checked Luggage Through an Airport’s Conveyor Belt Network

In today’s installment of The Internet May Be Destroying Society, but Hey, You Should Totally Check Out This Video, someone put a camera on luggage to show were it goes after airport check-in.

On March 21, local TV station WDIV in Detroit posted this invigorating 7-minute video of a piece of checked baggage as it zooms through the Detroit airport’s hidden warren of conveyor belts, security scans, and slides.

Of course you’ve wondered what sort of adventures your suitcase has after it parts ways with you at the airport, and thanks to this video, you now have at least part of the answer. Get ready for some flashbacks to water slides from your childhood, or at least some sniffly sense memory from the climax of Toy Story 2.

In this case, the protagonist of the behind-the-scenes airport odyssey appears to be a rough-and-ready Amazon Basics Hardside Spinner suitcase. After rambling along improbably long stretches of suspended beltway and passing through the pitch darkness of what looks like an X-ray screening chamber, the luggage finds itself abruptly separated from a fellow adventuring bag and ultimately delivered by a dronelike gurney to a man in a blue shirt who appears to be a TSA inspector. 

In the video, the bag never actually makes it to an airplane, which is how we know the footage is genuine. 

You’ll see a crazy array of behind-the-scenes chutes, slides, rubber curtains, exposed ductwork, and robotic gurneys that, until now, only your wardrobe got to experience.

If you like that (and why wouldn’t you?), then you’ll also like the following clip from 2017 that follows a bag as it navigates even more advanced sorting at an unspecified airport. This place makes the Detroit system look downright crude by comparison. If this doesn’t strengthen your appreciation for the simplicity of carry-ons, nothing will.

For a narrated explanation of how these crazy spaghetti bowls of cargo channels function, check out this 2018 video explaining how the astonishing luggage system works at the massive international airport in Dubai. 

We think you’ll agree that these videos instill a deeply felt admiration for the impressive level of complex engineering involved in losing your stuff.