Wednesday, Mar. 28, 2012
Mangled Bags
As the largest — in area — airport in the nation, the Denver International Airport opened to much fanfare in 1995 with an innovative, highly sustainable design that is suggestive of the city's snowcapped mountains. An engineering failure, however, caused their $230 million baggage-handling system to run amok, losing and mangling bags. United Airlines eventually abandoned the faulty and highly complex baggage system, which relied on computers, remote-controlled carts and a 21-mile-long (34 km) track, in 2005.