When you pack for a trip, you very carefully fill your suitcase with what you’ll need. Some of it is very valuable and important, like jewelry or medication. Clothes are neatly folded, small items are tucked into pockets, all done with care and precision.

Then you hand that suitcase to a complete stranger at the airport ticket counter without thinking twice about where it’s going next.

Well, we can’t speak for other airports—we all have different systems—but here at Pittsburgh International, your bag heads out on our eight miles of baggage belts to get to your plane, and vice versa when you return. When it was built in 1992, it was the largest baggage delivery system in the U.S.

That trip will be greatly shortened by our Terminal Modernization Program, which will modify the baggage system to work faster and more efficiently for a smaller origin-and-destination airport rather than the hub it was initially designed to serve.

This video from a couple of years ago gives you a “bag’s eye view” of the trip one bag can take through our terminals.