Terminal 5: Return to Baggage Mountain

by Jordan Yerman | April 5, 2008 at 08:02 am

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T5 is finding its second attempt at luggage triage to be as fraught as its first.

Hopes of Heathrow's Terminal 5 operating its first full schedule of flights have been scuppered by a new glitch with the baggage system.

Airport operator BAA's computer system which sorts bags before they are loaded onto flights malfunctioned and manual sorting had to be carried out.

British Airways cancelled 24 flights to and from Terminal 5 on Saturday due to the latest baggage problems.

The terminal suffered baggage problems within hours of opening nine days ago.

A spokeswoman described the situation on Saturday as "incredibly disappointing" but said the airline was working with BAA to resolve the situation as quickly as possible.

BAA said the problem was entirely its responsibility.

"Disappointing" is one way of putting it, but "unacceptable" is another: why is luggage management so much less of a problem for nearly every other airport on the planet? Terminal 5's luggage backlog is down to a mere 9,000 pieces, which is surely an improvement over the original 28,000.
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