15,000 bags stuck in Heathrow Terminal 5 as misery continues

by Amy Judd | March 29, 2008 at 06:39 pm

295 views | 0 Recommendations | 0 comments

British Airways has now admitted that 15,000 bags are at the airport that need to be sent to their rightful owners.
The backlog is expected to take about a week to clear and will only add to BA's already tarnished reputation. Yesterday the airline cancelled 67 out of 330 flights.
Needless to say, passengers are not happy.

BA handles about 75,000 bags a day at Heathrow, the majority now at T5 since the airline moved two-thirds of its operation to the new terminal on Thursday.

The Sunday Telegraph can disclose that senior BA executives had serious concerns about baggage-handling in the run-up to the disastrous opening of the £4.3 billion terminal.

Robert Atkins, BA's development manager at T5, expressed concern about baggage-handling less than two weeks before the terminal's official opening. In an exclusive interview, Mr Atkins said: "The biggest risk is, can the baggage system support the load?"

If anything went wrong, he said, "we would be in a pickle quite quickly".

But his fears, shared by high-ranking BA executives, were ignored. The failure to handle large volumes of luggage has caused more than 200 flight cancellations.

Mr Atkins said BA had tested the system for more than a year but admitted it was only at "80-90 per cent", and not at full capacity.

A BA spokesman said the airline was now trying to get luggage back by the quickest route possible. "In nearly all cases that will be by air on the next available flight but, in the UK, it might be by courier and, in some isolated cases, it might be by boat, to some parts of France, for example."