360 Camera Captures Bag's Journey Through Airport Luggage System

London Gatwick Airport has revealed what happens to luggage after it’s checked in by attaching an Insta360 to one of the tens of thousands of bags that are processed each day.

Titled, POV: you’re a bag at London Gatwick, the luggage begins at one of the check-in desks as a British Airways staff member waves it goodbye. It then heads down into the bowels of the terminal and makes a snake run through a series of baggage belts before getting X-rayed and eventually thrown off the carousel and into the arms of a baggage handler.

The Insta360 is then removed from the bag and placed on one of the airport vehicles, which drives around the runway perimeter, onto the tarmac, eventually stopping at an airplane where the action camera is reattached to the bag. There, it is placed onto a final conveyor belt, which takes it into the hold of the plane, ready for takeoff.

“What happens to your baggage after check-in? We rigged an Insta360 X4 to a suitcase to show you the whole journey from bag-drop to take-off,” Gatwick Airport writes on Instagram.

The Insta360 X4 offers 8K 360-degree video, plus 5.7K/60p and 4K/100p video. It has an invisible selfie stick effect, demonstrated in the Gatwick video, and a single-lens mode that is a 4K/60p action camera. Since it has two lenses, users can reframe their shot in post-processing, making it very useful for behind-the-scenes videos.

“Whatever the resolution or frame rate, 360-degree shooting with X4 offers unique benefits like the Invisible Selfie Stick effect, creating impossible third-person views that look like they were shot on a drone or with a personal camera crew! That extends to photos too, with X4 capable of 72MP 360-degree photos, now with built-in AI denoising,” Insta360 says.

It’s not the first time an airport has filmed a video revealing the lesser-seen parts of an airport: in 2015, Amsterdam Schiphol in the Netherlands strapped a 360-degree camera to a piece of baggage and put it through the maze-like conveyor belt system.

Image credits: Courtesy of London Gatwick Airport.