When Terminal C welcomes airlines from 19 September, the airport will be one of the first in the US to employ a "bags first" system, under which passengers collect their luggage before they clear immigration and customs. Currently, only Seattle and some smaller airports offer that facility.

Biometric facial recognition technology at a new Federal Inspection Service area will speed up the process, handling 2,000 passengers per hour and eliminating the need for individual screening at booths by Customs and Border Patrol officers. Instead, they will be equipped with mobile devices.

Previously, an automated RFID (radio frequency identification) system would send bags straight from the aircraft to the baggage hall.

At a cost of $2.75 billion, Terminal C will have 15 gates accommodating up to 20 aircraft at a time – including two Airbus A380s. Among airlines that will use Terminal C are British Airways, Aer Lingus, Icelandair, Emirates and Lufthansa.

Virgin Atlantic will continue to use the existing international terminal as its partner airline, Delta, is based there.
Orlando International is one of the world’s 10 busiest airports. The new terminal will handle 12 million passengers a year but will eventually be able to increase capacity at the airport to 60 million passengers a year.

’Totally different experience’

Unlike the current arrival system, where passengers pick up their bags after immigration and customs before taking a shuttle train to the main terminal building, at Terminal C, they will go straight through to the landside part of the terminal via the airside, signature Palm Court shopping and dining space.

From there, passengers will pass through a grand, brightly-lit thoroughfare called The Boulevard that leads to the airport’s railway station where, from 2023, passengers will be able to catch direct Brightline trains to West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale and Miami.

Kathleen Sharman, Greater Orlando Aviation Authority’s chief financial officer, said the new terminal would mean passengers could collect their luggage by the time they reached the baggage claim area, a 10-minute walk away, and the biometric inspection process would cut out border processing queues. “Terminal C will be a totally different experience for arriving passengers,” she added.