Heathrow baggage - the 'case' for the defence + funny quotes

http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/...ge-803954.html

The plane truth: The secret life of luggage

Ever wondered what happens to your bags after check-in? Or what the
chances are that they will actually make it to your destination? Lost
luggage is a big deal for travellers - and a major headachefor
airlines.

System error: Passengers line-up at the new Terminal 5 (c) EPA

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By Esther Walker
Thursday, 3 April 2008

The taxi to the airport was on time, the queue for check-in was a
paltry half-mile long, the girl at the desk smiled and you smiled back
and got a window seat. You even remembered both passport and ticket
this time. With a sigh of relief, you wave bye-bye to your suitcase as
it jerks out of view on a conveyor belt, into the bowels of the
airport, and go in search of a self-congratulatory cappuccino.

But what happens to your luggage next? Every year, tens of millions of
air passengers willingly entrust their luggage to a tangled system of
conveyor belts, sharp corners, wet floors, clumsy hands and trucks,
without a clue what goes on behind the scenes, relying on blind faith
that they will see their valuables again.

For the past week, the cancellation of 430 flights from Heathrow's new
Terminal 5, and faults with the terminal's automated baggage-handling
system have spelt disaster for travellers - and created a mammoth
backlog of lost luggage. As the biggest airline public-relations
disaster in living memory lurched from one surreal revelation to the
next, it emerged yesterday that British Airways had been reduced to
sending 20,000 cases by road to Milan, to be processed at a sorting
facility and then, with any luck, reunited with their owners.

It may sound like a crazy plan but it makes sense to the airline.
There is no glory in losing passengers' luggage. If a bag is mislaid
on a short-haul flight, it can cost the airline more to find and
return it than the fare the passenger paid in the first place. Back in
the summer of 2007, BA got into the habit of sending luggage-only
jumbos to the US in an effort to return passengers' belongings.

Although it takes 24 hours to transport luggage from Heathrow to Milan
before being returned, bizarrely it's quicker than sending the bags
all the way by air, due to the screening procedures, which are extra-
tough when luggage is flying without an owner. Terminal 5, despite
having the most hi-tech baggage-handling system available, still
doesn't have the wherewithal to process delayed bags on site.

If nothing else, the T5 debacle has highlighted the surprisingly
tricky business of getting air passengers' bags from A to B. You are
never more likely than now to be separated, for longer than you'd
like, from your bags while flying - and insurance claims on lost
luggage are at a record high.

In theory, the procedure for handling checked-in luggage is
straightforward. Departing Baggage Systems (ie when you fly out) will
"input" your bag, attaching a tag with a barcode to it, before sending
it along the conveyor belt, where it will be screened, sorted into the
baggage cart that's been assigned to your flight, and then loaded on
to the aircraft. Arriving Baggage Systems (ie when you land) will
unload the aircraft, stack the luggage on to a cart and then unload it
on to the designated carousel in the arrivals hall.

It all sounds straightforward, doesn't it? Yet airlines manage to send
luggage to the wrong place, not send it at all, or lose it, with
terrifying regularity.

YouTube is awash with videos of lost luggage: a single, ignored bag
left on a sun-baked runway at Dallas airport with the caption "No one
cares"; a holdall going round and round, endlessly, on a carousel; and
one clip, called "Where does your luggage go?", of an American
"customer service agent" gleefully "riding" a baggage conveyor belt in
an unnamed US airport.

"Your luggage gets put on all sorts of different conveyors," says the
star of the clip. "People often wonder, 'Why is my handle torn off?
Why is my zipper missing?', and it's because they go down at 90-degree
angles and there are different turns in the belt and they get hooked
on other pieces of luggage." Chew on that, Mr Samsonite.

One in every 60 pieces of luggage checked in at one of Europe's
airports will fail to arrive with its owner, according to the
Association of European Airlines. British Airways, the largest carrier
through Heathrow (accounting for almost half of all traffic) is
perennially named among the worst offenders. Last year, the world's
favourite airline mishandled 1.14 million bags, that's 26.5 bags per
1,000 passengers, which means that on any BA Boeing 747 flight with
350 passengers, around 10 can expect to arrive without their
belongings. (Only Air Portugal was worse than BA last year,
mishandling 27.8 bags per 1,000 passengers.)

So, why does it happen? Jamie Bowden, airline adviser, travel expert
and a former manager of British Airways' customer service at Heathrow,
believes that there are multiple causes. "When I started working at
Heathrow in 1979," he says, "the airport managed 27 passengers a year.
In 2007, there were 68 million, and with that increased traffic comes
extra pressure on old systems. Second, the security demands on baggage
globally - not just at Heathrow - have increased. You used to put a
tag on luggage with just the three letters indicating where the bag
was going. If the bag missed the flight for whatever reason, a handler
could simply put it on the next one. Now, with increased security, the
bags have to be checked all over again before being allowed aboard,
all of which takes time. Third, over the last 20 years there has been
huge growth in transfer traffic. This is where most bags get lost
because a passenger may fly into one terminal and out of another, and
they might be anything up to three miles apart. It's almost designed
to fail."

Indeed, Heathrow's transfer systems were built to cope with 18,000
transfer bags per day, but at peak times they handle 23,000.

Furthermore, recent restrictions on the number of bags you can take on
board haven't helped, putting even more pressure on the volume of
luggage going into the hold, all of which needs to be checked,
screened and sorted.

Responsibility (ie blame) for the care of luggage is divided between
the airport, the airline and the company handling baggage, such as
Servisair or Swissport, which adds yet more potential for things to go
wrong. The airline and its baggage-handling agent are responsible for
bags during check-in, for removing bags from chutes to aircraft, and
then getting bags from planes to terminal. The airport manager, such
as BAA, is responsible for providing and operating the mechanical
baggage systems, which screen and sort the bags.

When things go wrong, they don't hesitate to blame each other.

According to BAA's own figures, 36 per cent of misplaced bags are the
fault of delayed flights; 32 per cent are caused by delays in
unloading luggage; and 23 per cent by delays in loading luggage. BAA
claims that only 6 per cent of misplaced bags are down to the handling
equipment.

"Baggage handling is all about logistics," says aviation expert Colin
Higgins. "The most common problem is when flights arrive off-schedule,
whether they're early or late. Baggage-handling teams organise
themselves to the schedule, and in very busy airports those schedules
are tight. Because everyone is trying to drive down aviation costs, it
isn't possible to have spare teams. If a plane is late, the team
assigned to unload that plane may have moved on to another flight that
has come in on time. They can't have spare teams hanging around just
in case. You only need to have two flights 20 or 30 minutes off-
schedule for things to get really backed up."

But despite what BAA's statistics might imply, mishandled bags aren't
always the airline's fault; things can and do go wrong with the
mechanised systems, as happened at Terminal 5. The barcodes on luggage
labels, for example, meant to help bags find their way to the right
airport, can be misread by automated systems - most often, the cases
flip over on the conveyor belt, so the tags are hidden from the
scanners. This is such a problem that Emirates is performing trials on
a new bag-tracking system that uses radio-frequency identification
(RFID); the system is costing the airline £150,000.

But last week's teething troubles at Terminal 5 are as nothing
compared with the early days at Denver International. Almost twice the
size of Manhattan and costing $5bn, America's largest airport was due
to open for business in 1993 but was delayed by two years. Chief among
its problems were a series of spectacular hitches with the new,
automated baggage-handling system. When the operators revealed the
system in action in 1994, there were scenes of clothes and other
belongings strewn across conveyor belts; the machinery designed to
move items from belt to belt also had a tendency to toss luggage off
belts and on to the floor. The airport stuck with the system for an
entire year, haemorrhaging $1m per day in extra costs, before the
system was eventually jettisoned in favour of a manual alternative.

Behind the scenes, getting lost or being mishandled aren't the only
perils faced by your luggage. Have you ever seen those suitcases
wrapped tightly in clear plastic and thought the owners a touch
paranoid? Think again. Last year, Operation Bruno, an investigation
led by Essex CID, led to the arrest of a staggering 22 baggage
handlers at Stansted airport for stealing from luggage. A former
employee of Swissport recounted how one colleague routinely went
through every bag on every flight, removing any valuables.

Last year, Heathrow alone reported 1,145 incidents of items missing
from luggage. Bags are more likely to be rifled through if they look
expensive, so it's best to save your Louis Vuitton steamer trunk for a
car trip. Wrapping your luggage in plastic won't stop a determined
thief, but it's a deterrent, and you can at least take the mangled
wrapping to the airline as proof of tampering.

If your luggage is mishandled, and your holiday is not quite as jolly
for it, you will almost certainly be reunited with it eventually; only
one in every 2,000 mishandled bags is lost forever - they usually end
up being auctioned off by airlines, who give the proceeds to charity.

"There's not much that passengers can do about mishandled baggage,
except take as little as possible and take it into the cabin with
them," says Colin Higgins. "We're all guilty of going on holiday and
taking clothes with us that we never wear. My wife takes about three
pairs of shoes on holiday, then wears her trainers constantly for two
weeks."

So, next time you fly, ask yourself: do I really need to take my
cowboy boots? Can I get through a fortnight with one pair of jeans?
Travelling light may be the only sure way that both you and your bags
will go on the same holiday.

Case notes

* An estimated 20 million bags are lost by airlines each year.

* Figures published in February by the Association of European
Airlines revealed an average 16.6 bags per 1,000 passengers were
delayed on flights by major European airlines in 2007. The average for
2006 was 15.7.

* The worst performer was TAP Air Portugal, with 27.8 bags while Air
Malta came in top, losing just 4.5 bags per 1,000 passengers. BA was
worst in Britain, and second worst in Europe, with 26.5 bags. And that
was before the T5 fiasco.

* Less than 1 per cent of luggage remains lost for more than 60 days.

* In 2005, US funeral directors were criticised for starting a
"frequent dier programme" in which undertakers were rewarded with air
miles for loyalty to certain airlines. Sending coffins by air is
lucrative thanks to high fees - in 2005 these ranged from $250 to $600
per coffin. Delta Airline ships about 50,000 corpses a year, while
JetBlue says coffins account for 18 per cent of its cargo revenue.
(Funeral directors who ship 1,000 coffins a year can get enough air
miles to pay for a trip for two to Hawaii.)

* An average of 120 laptops are handed in to lost property at Heathrow
every month. Fifteen of those are auctioned off after 3 months.

* Heathrow's Terminal 5 has 11 miles of baggage conveyor belt and is
designed to deal with 12,000 bags an hour - almost double the capacity
at Terminals 1 and 4.

* At the latest count, there was a backlog of 19,000 bags at T5, down
from a peak of 28,000. Last night, an estimated 10 per cent of them
were being shipped to Milan to be sorted and returned by an Italian
courier company.

* The Air Transport Users Council (AUC) claims that 61 per cent of
mishandled baggage complaints are related to connecting passengers.

Trips from hell: 'it happened to us'

"They just didn't care"

Raj Chande, 26, London, works in the city

I was flying from London to Rio in Brazil via Paris. The flight to
Paris was delayed and I had to sprint through the airport to get the
Rio flight. My bag didn't make it. It arrived at my hotel later that
day so it wasn't too bad, but then on the way back, I got to London
and my bag didn't turn up again. I couldn't believe it.

This time, I was in Paris for three hours and all they had to do was
take my bag of one plane and stick it on another. I was tired and
irritable, so I thought I'd go and shout at somebody for 10 minutes to
feel better. But they were French and were very good at letting me
know they didn't care.

I was on the edge of my sofa waiting to hear and it turned up the next
day. I've flown round the world and have been on some pretty ropey
domestic airlines in India and have never had a problem. How hard can
it be?!

"Decided to risk it"

Tom Elkins, 23, Reading, trainee accountant

I was flying back from a business trip to Edinburgh and was quite
excited to be flying into T5 on opening day. But we were delayed in
Edinburgh because the plane coming up was late, so we were watching
the chaos on the news on the TV. I phoned my sister to ask if I should
check in my bags. She said no, but I decided to risk it.

That was a week ago and I still haven't got my bag. I've been tracking
it online and it says the bag is due to be returned but there's no
indication when that will be, or where my bag is now. It's probably in
Milan.

"Treated like dirt"

Martin Ginzel, 33, Berlin, music TV producer

Two years ago, a friend and I were flying from Berlin to Agadir, via
Geneva, on Royal Air Maroc. My bag didn't arrive. The guys there
didn't really care. We spent the next four days until it turned up
commuting from our hotel back to the airport, which was way out of
town. Agadir's really ugly and we wanted to move on but we couldn't.
It was hot and all I had was jeans and a jumper.

My friend, Susie, gave me some of her more masculine clothes, but they
still had little bows and things, and were two sizes too small.
Suddenly I had a midriff! And I had to go to the bazaar and buy old
man's polyester pants. It was difficult to claim money and they
treated me like dirt. Maybe it was because I looked so ridiculous.

"Bag still AWOL"

Deborah Kennedy, 38, north London, social worker

I flew to Parma, Majorca, on EasyJet with a couple of friends last
December. My bag was checked in as belonging to Emily Kennedy and sent
to Belfast. The girls both got theirs and the EasyJet staff said they
couldn't contact Gatwick because their e-mail was down, and said they
couldn't phone.

After three days, I got so ****ed off trying to contact them and shop
for new things that I decided to get an early flight back. But they
said I'd have to pay, so I stayed.

My bag is still missing. I filled in all the forms and last month
EasyJet offered £400 to compensate for £1,000 worth of goods, all the
inconvenience, and the £75 I was supposed to spend out there. I said
no, and that's the last I've heard. I don't think I'll ever get my bag
back, unless there's an Emily Kennedy in Belfast who has it.

"Handlers just shrugged"

Jim Waller, 31, civil engineer

I flew from Vancouver to Fiji, via Los Angeles, on a round-the-world
ticket a few years ago. I had to pick up and re-check my rucksack when
I switched airlines. Even so, my rucksack didn't make it on to the
right plane. I was in Fiji with just my passport, the clothes on my
back, and a Clive Cussler novel. The baggage handlers just shrugged in
my general direction when they saw everyone else had their bags but
me.

The airline gave me £10 to spend on swimming shorts and flip-flops as
I waited for the next flight, two days later. In the end, it was all I
needed - I think I wore the same flip-flops and shorts even when my
bag did arrive.

"A day spent traipsing"

Juliet Perry, 25, TV executive

I was flying with Iberia to a music festival in Spain last summer.
They lost my bag and my tent, an eight-man tepee by Cath Kidston with
little cowboys printed on it. We waited for ages while the Iberia
employee kept muttering that he needed a drink. In the end, we went to
a hotel and the next day I had to go to the festival wearing my
friend's clothes, which were too small.

A festival is the worst place not to have essentials. Luckily, one of
the boys I was with lent us a spare tent, but it wasn't a patch on
mine.

In the end, Iberia sent my bag to the local town, so we spent a day
traipsing round the town hall, the tourist office and the police
station. Eventually we found it, but when I opened it, some cheeky
baggage handler had left a crushed beer can in the top of it.

"Some berk took my case"

Susan Halpern, 64, retired lecturer

Last December, my husband and I flew to South Africa with Air France.
We arrived in Johannesburg to discover that some berk had mistakenly
taken my suitcase off the carousel instead of his own.

The Air France staff were pretty unhelpful and we had to rush to catch
a connecting flight to a safari lodge. I disappeared into the heat and
dirt of the bush with nothing apart from the clothes I was wearing, a
lipstick, my iPod and a pack of Orbit gum. It was pretty grim. A
couple of days later the airline sent the case on; to say I was
relieved would be putting it mildly.

When we arrived back in Manchester I discovered that my suitcase
hadn't made the change of planes in Paris. What are the odds on losing
your luggage in both directions?

It took three months for Air France to reimburse the money I'd had to
shell out on replacement clothes and cosmetics. But the fact that
they'd ruined my holiday didn't figure in their financial
calculations.

What to do if you lose your luggage

* So you're left leaning glumly on your airport trolley, watching that
empty baggage carousel wind down. Your bag is bound for Bora Bora
while you're waiting patiently for it in Pisa. You've no sunglasses,
no swimming trunks, not even a toothbrush. What do you do next?

* First things first: make sure the schmucks who lost your bag know
so. Inform the carrier or its agents of the loss. Take the receipt you
were given when you checked in to the lost luggage desk, who ought to
give you a Property Irregularity Report (PIR) to fill out. Keep a copy
of all the documentation for later, when you'll be photocopying it and
stuffing it into an envelope to accompany your letter of complaint.

* Some airlines will give you a meagre amount of cash immediately -
enough for a replacement toothbrush, at least. But if you want
compensation for the inconvenience, get typing tout de suite: you need
to make your claim in writing within 21 days for delayed baggage. For
luggage that is lost altogether you'll have to wait until 21 days have
passed before writing again.

* Don't expect the airline to be over generous. Most will cover your
loss to the tune of £14 per kilogram, to a maximum of £240. If you
have travel insurance, the insurer should cover the rest. Check your
agreement with the insurer before you travel, however; if the delay is
due to, say, a terrorism scare, you may not be covered.

* If your bag has been swiped from the carousel by a third party, the
airline is not officially responsible for it, but it's worth making it
known to the ground agent anyway. In most cases, the passenger that
picked it up will return it and it will then be sent on to you. Don't
pick up someone else's bag deliberately as ransom - there's no telling
what humiliating items you may then have to explain to curious customs
officials at some later point.

* There are ways to minimise the risk of lost or delayed luggage. One
is to check in early, giving your bag plenty of time to make it from
the check-in desk to the aircraft. Another is to buy yourself a
brightly coloured bag that avoids... a case of mistaken identity.
Don't forget your name and address - that won't hurt, either.

Tim Walker

"Kwyjibo" kirjoitti
...

"Spider Pig" wrote in message
...
http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/...ge-803954.html

snip

Jamie Bowden, airline adviser, travel expert
and a former manager of British Airways' customer service at Heathrow,
believes that there are multiple causes. "When I started working at
Heathrow in 1979," he says, "the airport managed 27 passengers a year.


27 passengers per year???

All the rest were left on their own. Just like today.

Spider Pig:


The plane truth: The secret life of luggage

Jamie Bowden, airline adviser, travel expert
and a former manager of British Airways' customer service at Heathrow,
believes that there are multiple causes. "When I started working at
Heathrow in 1979," he says, "the airport managed 27 passengers a year.
In 2007, there were 68 million.

In 1979, Heathrow planned one flight. When 27 passengers showed up, the
flight was canceled, and the passengers were put onto the bus to Koala
Lumpur.

The bus ride was disastrous. None of the passengers survived, but three
bags made it all the way to the destination.
Relatively spoken, they were doing pretty well with the baggage, back
then.



--
Erick

"Erick T. Barkhuis" -o-m kirjoitti
al.net...
Spider Pig:

In 1979, Heathrow planned one flight. When 27 passengers showed up, the
flight was canceled, and the passengers were put onto the bus to Koala
Lumpur.

And there was one more gag there. Everybody onboard thought they are riding
to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia instead of Koala Lumpur, Australia.

On Thu, 3 Apr 2008, Spider Pig wrote:

next, it emerged yesterday that British Airways had been reduced to
sending 20,000 cases by road to Milan, to be processed at a sorting
facility and then, with any luck, reunited with their owners.

Do you happen to know what kind of "sorting facility" that is ?

Could it be the one at Malpensa airport recently orphaned of most of its
former Alitalia traffic ? (if so it would be rather funny, since we
used to consider it (1) slow (2) unsafe as subject to thefts


--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
is a newsreading account used by more persons to
avoid unwanted spam. Any mail returning to this address will be rejected.
Users can disclose their e-mail address in the article if they wish so.

"Spider Pig" wrote in message
...
http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/...ge-803954.html

snip

Jamie Bowden, airline adviser, travel expert
and a former manager of British Airways' customer service at Heathrow,
believes that there are multiple causes. "When I started working at
Heathrow in 1979," he says, "the airport managed 27 passengers a year.


27 passengers per year???

--
Kwyj.

On 3 Apr, 14:20, Giovanni Drogo wrote:
On Thu, 3 Apr 2008, Spider Pig wrote:
next, it emerged yesterday that British Airways had been reduced to
sending 20,000 cases by road to Milan, to be processed at a sorting
facility and then, with any luck, reunited with their owners.

Do you happen to know what kind of "sorting facility" that is ?

Could it be the one at Malpensa airport recently orphaned of most of its
former Alitalia traffic ? (if so it would be rather funny, since we
used to consider it (1) slow (2) unsafe as subject to thefts

--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
is a newsreading account used by more persons to
avoid unwanted spam. Any mail returning to this address will be rejected.
Users can disclose their e-mail address in the article if they wish so.

its probably a lie, so that they can blame the italians ;-)

On 3 Apr, 14:20, Giovanni Drogo wrote:
On Thu, 3 Apr 2008, Spider Pig wrote:
next, it emerged yesterday that British Airways had been reduced to
sending 20,000 cases by road to Milan, to be processed at a sorting
facility and then, with any luck, reunited with their owners.

Do you happen to know what kind of "sorting facility" that is ?

Could it be the one at Malpensa airport recently orphaned of most of its
former Alitalia traffic ? (if so it would be rather funny, since we
used to consider it (1) slow (2) unsafe as subject to thefts

--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
is a newsreading account used by more persons to
avoid unwanted spam. Any mail returning to this address will be rejected.
Users can disclose their e-mail address in the article if they wish so.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2...rlineindustry1

Order prevails in warehouse where Heathrow's lost bags become found

* Tom Kington in Milan
* guardian.co.uk,
* Friday April 4 2008
* Article history

About this article
Close
This article was first published on guardian.co.uk on Friday April 04
2008. It was last updated at 17:16 on April 04 2008.

Miles from the scene of chaos that Heathrow's new Terminal 5 became
last week, a softly spoken call centre operator in Milan was trying
patiently to end the odyssey of one of the 28,000 bags that
disappeared under the rubble of British Airways' reputation.

After flying from Aberdeen, the bag became buried in the baggage
handling meltdown at Heathrow while its owner caught a connection to
Budapest. Now the bag, along with almost 3,000 others, has been
trucked to Milan for sorting, only for the owner to tell the operator
to fly it back to an address in London.

As flights were cancelled, baggage belts ground to a halt and
travellers bedded down in Terminal 5, BA decided to send stranded bags
bound for Europe 600 miles by road to be sorted out by a small
company, On Board Express, on an industrial estate in Italy.

By Thursday, a third and possibly final truckload of suitcases,
surfboards, golf clubs, guitars and rucksacks was neatly lined up in
rows in the warehouse, ready to be barcoded, swathed in plastic and
gaffer tape cocoons and flown back.

"It's delicate work, but everything is watched by cameras and guards,"
said the company's chief executive, Giovanni Tinelli, 48, from his
airy office above the warehouse.

Tanned, impeccably dressed and surrounded by family portraits and
modern abstract art, the Porshe-driving manager has been portrayed by
the Italian press as the man who bailed out BA, but he is having
nothing of it.

"I won't hear a bad word about British - they are professionals and
have really invested in baggage retrieval," he said.

Part of that investment is in On Board Express, which normally earns
half its EURO 10m (£7.9m) turnover forwarding an average of 130 lost bags
a day to BA passengers who fly into Italy and Germany.

Then there are the crises, twice last year and now this week, during
which Tinelli steps into the breach to cover all of Europe for BA -
meaning bags destined for Spain and even Poland pass through Milan.

This time, the lost bags were trucked in from Heathrow to avoid the
extra security involved in flying unattended luggage. Meanwhile,
passengers arriving at European destinations to find no luggage on the
carousel were handed On Board Express's number at the airport to call
and see if their bag had showed up in Milan.

Tinelli said almost all of the bags he received last week had been
lost as they transited through Heathrow. Walking down the corridor to
the call centre, he listens in as an operator talks to a passenger who
made it from Atlanta to Dusseldorf via London, but left his luggage in
Terminal 5.

Murmuring down the phone from 7am to 9pm is a team of around 20
operators, average age 25 and an international mix of Finns,
Norwegians, Moroccans, Albanians and Britons.

"English callers are generally calm, but since we are dealing with
transit luggage through Heathrow there are few of them," said call
centre manager Roberto Buchicchio, almost wistfully. "It's the
Americans who get angriest, followed by the Indians and Israelis."

Nine out of 10 lost bags are gone for good, say BA staff

Rashid Razaq, Evening Standard

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standa...aff/article.do

http://tinyurl.com/6praq2

Nine out of 10 bags lost at the beleaguered Terminal 5 may never be
reunited with their owners, airport staff have claimed.

A security guard, who took photographs of the 5,000 cases being
processed by just nine airport workers, said staff were struggling to
cope with the backlog.

"I'll be amazed if anyone who lost their bag is going to get it back.
I reckon at least 90 per cent of bags are lost for good. There are 25
baggage handling staff working airside - and just nine are dealing
with lost bags.

"The rest are concentrating on the new bags coming in to make sure the
situation doesn't get any worse," he said.

British Airways said the luggage mountain had been reduced from 20,000
with handlers manually sorting bags after the automated system was hit
by more technical problems.

A spokesman for Heathrow operator BAA, said: "The system is now
functioning well."

=================

However the company rag 'BA News' stated on 3/4/2008:

BRITISH Airways teams are working around the clock to return delayed
baggage to customers.

At its peak there were more than 20,000 bags but as of 9am yesterday
[3/4/2008] 8,000 were on their way to customers, 10,000 were being
worked on and 7,000 bags were waiting to be processed.

Gareth Kirkwood, director of operations, said: "We are making every
effort to re-unite customers with their bags and once again apologise
for the difficulties they have been facing.

"The work to process delayed bags takes time as bags must undergo
security screening.

"In the past when we have had large baggage backlogs we have been able
to use the baggage systems in terminal 1 and terminal 4 to screen,
process and sort large numbers of bags.

"We decided not to fully use the system in terminal 5 to process these
bags automatically until we were confident it would help us. Therefore
we are having to do many of the processes manually."

Staff from London Gatwick, engineering, and cargo are supporting the
baggage teams, along with extra volunteers from across the business.
Many bags are being sorted, re-screened and containerised at Gatwick
airport's cargo facility, then returned to Heathrow to be loaded on to
flights.

Bags have also been sent to customers in the US for next day delivery
via FedEx.

For those customers in EU countries on the European mainland, bags are
being sent to a specialist sorting facility in Milan, which will help
to get bags back to those customers as soon as possible.

Gareth said: "We are working around the clock to try to get bags back
as quickly as possible, but due to the volumes it will take some
time."

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Emails of complaint can be sent to:


Company.SecretaryATba.com
Gareth.KirkwoodATba.com - Director of Operations
David.NoyesATba.com - Director of Customer Service, TERMINAL 5
banews.lettersATba.com - BA News, company rag

The local press can also be emailed at:

Editor Hillingdon Times bfpnewsATlondon.newsquest.co.uk,
Editor Skyport editorATskyportuk.co.uk,
Heathrow Villager inkywestATfreenet.co.uk,
Editor Gazette/Leader editorialuxbridgeATtrinitysouth.co.uk,

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