Cleveland City Council gave the green light Monday to spend up to $6.5 million overhauling the baggage-handling system at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, a decade-old setup that was designed before the airport's passenger counts climbed back near record territory. The upgrade will swap in new servers, operator workstations, baggage-status displays and updated software at the upper-level computer controls that run the system.
The approval came Oct. 5, according to Cleveland.com, which reported that the city is now authorized to enter into contracts covering the project. The current baggage system was designed in 2013 and installed in 2017 and early 2018, the outlet reported, and Hopkins has since seen passenger growth that outpaced the forecasts used to design it.
Beyond the control-room upgrades, crews will modify the conveyor system itself to reduce collisions, improve bag flow and increase capacity, per the same report. Variable-speed drives will give operators greater control over conveyor speeds, and the project's scope covers engineering, equipment purchases, testing and installation. Installation work is planned for overnight operating periods, with phased testing followed by a final transition to the upgraded system.
Why City Officials Say the Fix Is Overdue
Bryant Francis, Hopkins' port control director, told city council's finance committee that Cleveland Terminal & Equipment Co. — the company that manages and maintains the airport's baggage system through an airline consortium — identified the project as a necessary improvement to the existing setup, the article notes. Francis said CTEC, which will oversee the upgrade, was prepared to begin work soon. According to the city legislation cited in the report, the upgrade is designed to improve baggage operations reliability and efficiency and to accommodate expected passenger growth over the next five to seven years.
That growth has been real, if recently uneven. Cleveland Hopkins recorded 10,003,833 passengers in 2025, according to a separate cleveland.com report, a total that one account put at 1.7% below 2024's 10.17 million figure while another account from the outlet described 2025 travel as down slightly from a 2024 total of 10.2 million. Either way, 2024 stood as Hopkins' highest passenger count since 2008, and officials had to lower their 2025 forecast from 10.4 million to 10.1 million as travel trends softened.
More Recent Numbers Show a Mixed Picture
The dip hasn't been dramatic. Hopkins handled 963,742 passengers in July, down 1.2% from the 975,137 recorded in July 2025, cleveland.com reported in a separate piece on summer travel trends. Even so, July was the airport's busiest month of the year so far, and through July the airport had served 5.88 million passengers — essentially unchanged from the same period a year earlier.
For comparison, nearby Akron-Canton Airport welcomed 938,814 passengers in 2025, a 25% jump over 2024, according to the same cleveland.com report on regional air travel. Hopkins isn't alone in overhauling its baggage infrastructure, either: Tampa International Airport is in the midst of its own project, with crews replacing elements of its checked baggage system and roughly 25,000 feet of new conveyor belts slated for installation, according to tampabay.com.
Back in Cleveland, the finance committee discussion framed the $6.5 million cap as the cost of keeping pace with an airport that has outgrown the system installed less than a decade ago. With council's approval now in place and CTEC said to be ready to begin work soon, Hopkins travelers can expect the conveyor belts and control rooms behind their checked luggage to look considerably different in the coming years.
