VIDEO: 30 million pieces of luggage take 30-kilometre trip at Pearson Airport in Mississauga, Ontario

You’ve arrived at Pearson Airport in Mississauga, checked in at the appropriate counter and turned over your luggage to be put on board the waiting plane.

Now, as you wait for the call to board the flight for your journey, your suitcases and other checked baggage are taking a little trip of their own — a 30-kilometre ride, to be precise, along airport conveyor belts inside the depths of Pearson before arriving inside the aircraft to accompany you to your destination (see video below).

That’s the same distance covered by a ride from Pearson Airport to Ford’s Oakville Assembly Plant located where the QEW and Highway 403 meet, on Mississauga’s western border.

Pearson officials noted in a post to social media this week that some 30 million pieces of luggage — roughly 82,000 each day — took that same trip behind airport walls in 2023.

“With millions of travellers passing through the airport each year comes millions of pieces of luggage. In fact, last year the airport processed around 30 million bags — 82,000 each day,” airport officials said in a post to X (formerly Twitter).

Pearson authorities added baggage operations are a collaborative effort between the airport and airlines, with the goal of ensuring luggage arrives at its destination along with passengers.

“Once your checked baggage is dropped off, it moves through 30 kilometres of conveyor belts, where it is screened and sorted,” they continued. “It’s then picked up by an airline baggage handler and loaded onto carts to the aircraft. When arriving at Toronto Pearson, your checked bags are unloaded from the aircraft by the airline baggage handlers and onto the conveyor belts to the carousels for passengers to pick up.”

With millions of travellers passing through the airport each year comes millions of pieces of luggage. In fact, last year the airport processed around 30 million bags –- about 82,000 each day. Baggage operations are a collaborative effort between the airport and airlines to make… pic.twitter.com/MPhwXxi9X2

— Toronto Pearson (@TorontoPearson) March 6, 2024

With the busy March break travel period about to get into full swing at Pearson, those luggage numbers will increase over the next 10 days or so, according to airport officials.

They expect the airport and airlines to process about 87,000 pieces of luggage per day, with that number jumping to 100,000 on the busiest day.

In total, Pearson is expecting more than one million pieces of luggage over the course of the March break travel period.

“Some passengers pack light while others bring everything but the kitchen sink,” Pearson officials said in an earlier post to X.

As the annual break begins, some 140,000 daily travellers and 1,000 flights per day are expected at Pearson Airport starting Thursday and continuing through the end of next week, officials said earlier.

Those figures mark a significant increase — about nine per cent — over the 2023 March break travel period, according to the airport.

March break is one of the busiest travel periods of the year along with the summer travel period and the weeks leading up to Christmas and New Year’s Day, Pearson officials have said.

(Cover photo: Pearson Airport X)