Your Luggage’s Secret Path at the Airport

⊙ By Matt Barrett

翻譯：丁一

在出發地把行李交給航空公司，輕輕松松地上飛機，到了目的地機場，在傳送帶上取下行李——一切似乎都理所當然，再簡單不過了。可你知道嗎？你的托運行李的經歷可比你的旅程復雜得多了。不信嗎？這期且聽小編來“科普”一下吧！

聽力難度

英式發音 適合精聽

語速：135詞/分鐘

Flight, ready for take-off. There’s also the small matter of up to eight tons of baggage that flies with us on the biggest jets. We don’t even think about it. We drop our bag at the check-in and just expect it tomaterialize[現身]at the other end. Most of us have never even considered the vast machines, unseen workers, and complex networks needed to move our luggage from A to B.

Dubai Airport handles more international passengers than any other. In just three hours of the morning peak, they process around 50,000 bags. Annually, the airport handles astaggering[令人震驚的]57 million items, and it’s all got to bewhisked[快速移動]through the airport. Every last one of them has to get to the right plane at exactly the right time.

But, no matter where you are in the world, everysuitcase[行李箱]has to have one of these, thehumble[不起眼的]baggagetag[標簽]. It might not seem like much, but this tag is your bag’s passport. Some of it is easy todecipher[解讀]:passenger name and 3-digit destination airport code[代碼]. But,the really important thing is the 10-digit number printed on every bag tag. The first digit identifies the bag type andpriority[優先]level. The next three, the airline it’s flying with, and the final six are your bag’s unique ID code. This simplebar code[條形碼]determines exactly what happens to your suitcase after check-in. It’s about toembark[開始]on a journey of up to 85 miles to reach your plane.

Eighty feet beneath the airport lies a bizarre[奇特的]subterranean[地下的]world, a hidden high-speed railway network.With a construction cost of around $700 million, this is the world’s biggest luggage system, and not a baggage-handler insight[視野].

After check-in, your bag slides into a yellowtray[盤]. Each one has a uniqueradio-frequency[無線電頻率]chip ID, and the computertracks[追蹤]which bag has landed in which tray.

Graham Pollack （Manager）: So, when the tray is on the track system, we have RF ID readers. Those readers will take the information from the tray and it will send a message to our baggage control room. It will also tell the baggage system in which direction that tray should go to [sic]. We can track 100%of your bags. We track the trays as they go ’round the system so we’ll be able to identify exactly where that tray is and make sure it ends up at the correct location at the correct time.

The computerized brain of the luggage system knows exactly where every bag is going within this huge network,and it’llplot[計劃]every inch of its journey to your plane. If your flight’s leaving within an hour, the computer sends your bag straight to the loading area. But, for those of us who like to arrive early, our bags end up here, the early-baggage storage[儲存]system.

Graham: The bag will be stored on the tray within the racking[行李架]system. When the system identifies that that flight is ready to leave, it will take that bag from the system using a mechanical arm andinject[投入]it into the main system.

But, despite all this technology, for the final few feet up to the plane, it’s back to good old-fashioned muscle power.Without theseautomated[自動的]baggage systems, large airports couldn’t hope to deal with their share of the three-and-a-half billion pieces of luggage we fly with annually.

Every last one of them has to get to the right plane at exactly the right time.

這句話中的every last one of常常讓中國學生困惑不已：every one就是every one，last one就是last one，every last one放在一起是怎么回事兒呢？原來last在作形容詞時，有一個我們平常不太熟悉的意思，作“每一個的”解，起強調作用。它可以單獨使用（千萬別作“最后的”理解哦），也可以在前面加上every，起雙重強調的作用，如：

● I knew the last details of his wedding.

（他婚禮的每一個細節我都很清楚。）● Every last one of them failed the

exam.（他們所有人都考砸了。）

參考譯文

航班準備起飛了。另外還有一件微不足道的小事，那就是總重量可達八噸的行李與我們一同登上最大的噴氣式飛機——這事兒我們連想也不去想。我們在值機柜臺放下行李，便期待它自然而然地出現在目的地，大多數人從沒想過需要動用巨型機器、大家看不見的工作人員，以及復雜的網絡系統，才能把行李從甲地送到乙地。

迪拜機場服務的國際乘客數量冠絕全球。僅僅在早上三小時的高峰期里，他們就要處理大約五萬件行李。迪拜機場每年要處理的行李數量驚人，多達5700萬件。它們必須在機場內快速移動，每件行李都要分秒不差地裝上它所屬的飛機。

但不論你在世界的哪個角落，每件托運行李都必須附上這個東西——不起眼的行李牌。它看似無足輕重，實際上卻是行李的護照。上面的內容有些還是很容易看懂的，比如：乘客名字，以及三個字母的目的地代碼，但真正重要的是每個行李牌上的十位數代碼，其中第一個數字代表行李種類及優先級別，后面的三個數字代表航空公司，最后六個數字則是每件行李的獨有代碼。這個簡單的條碼決定了行李托運后的去向。它將展開一次距離可能長達85英里（約137公里）的旅程，最終到達你乘坐的航班。

在機場地下80英尺（約24.4米）處有個神奇的世界——一個隱藏的高速軌道網絡。這個造價七億美元（約合人民幣46.4億元）的機器是世界上最龐大的行李處理系統，而在這里，你看不見一名處理行李的工作人員。

辦理好托運手續后，行李便被放入一個黃色托盤里。每個托盤都有一個獨一無二的無線射頻晶片，電腦會追蹤行李在哪個托盤里。

格雷厄姆·波拉克（主管）：就這樣，托盤進入追蹤系統后，我們會使用無線射頻辨識閱讀器，閱讀器從托盤里讀取資料后，將它傳到行李處理控制室。它也向處理系統發出托盤該往哪里去的指令。我們可以追蹤每一件行李。行李在系統內傳輸時，我們會一路追蹤行李的去向，從而得知托盤的準確位置，以確保它在合適的時間到達合適的地點。

控制行李處理系統的電腦知道每件行李在這個巨大網絡中的準確走向，并且會一直規劃行李的每一步，直至它上了飛機為止。如果你乘坐的航班將在一個小時內起飛，電腦便會將你的行李直接送到卸載區。但有些乘客喜歡提早到機場，那他們的行李就會被送到這里——早到行李儲存系統。

格雷厄姆：行李會儲存在行李架里的盤內。當系統識別出它所屬的航班開始準備起飛了，系統就會用機械臂從行李架取出行李，放到主系統內。

盡管有高科技助力，但把行李送上飛機那短短的幾米，還是要靠人工完成。倘若沒有自動行李處理系統，大型機場可別妄想能每年妥善處理35億件托運行李。