28,000 Bags Caught in Continuing T5 Heathrow ' National Embarrassment'

It will take up to a week to return 28,000 bags placed in temporary storage after troubles at Heathrow's Terminal 5, a government minister has said.

Aviation Minister Jim Fitzpatrick said the opening of the £4.3bn terminal had fallen "well short of expectations".
British Airways says the backlog of bags has to be manually checked before they can be returned to their owners.
It has also emerged that the Olympic torch, due to arrive at T5 on Saturday, will now arrive at a VIP suite instead.

Travelers hoping to fly from the new Terminal 5 at London Heathrow airport on Monday face more delays from troubles with the computerized baggage-handling system, and the British transport secretary offered Sunday to help resolve problems that have led to hundreds of flight cancelations, thousands of lost bags and much embarrassment.
British Airways - the sole tenant of Terminal 5 - canceled 37 domestic and European flights Sunday, bringing the total number of cancellations since the terminal opened Thursday to 245.
The airline said there would be more cancellations Monday and Tuesday, with the aim of operating 87 percent of its scheduled flights. An airline spokeswoman could not predict when services would return to normal.

British Airways Plc canceled 54flights at London Heathrow airport's new Terminal 5 today asit worked through a backlog of about 20,000 pieces of strandedluggage on the fifth day of disruptions.
The carrier abandoned 14 percent of scheduled servicesfrom the terminal, affecting travel to short-haul destinationsincluding Paris and Edinburgh. Some 340 flights will operate,said Euan Fordyce, a spokesman for the London-based airline.

David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, noted on his blog that he met anunnamed politician during a meeting in Slovenia over the weekend who hadasked him to speak to airport bosses.
If your flight is delayed or cancelled, or your baggage is lost, you are entitled to compensation

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In a post headedTearing your hair out, he wrote: “He arrived merely to transit, but hisbags are nowhere to be seen and it was whispered that it might take weeks.He asked me to pass on a message to BA/BAA: for goodness sake get your acttogether.”