Delta Airline Sends Empty Plane To Pick Up 1,000 Pieces Luggage They Lost At London¡¯s Heathrow

Anyone who's travelling outside of India today is aware of the chaos that airports have become. Some of that is due to the fact that a lot of people have started traveling again after Covid subsided. At the same time, airlines and airports are experiencing staff shortages and flight cancellations for a variety of reasons.

London's Heathrow Airport is a prime example. It's already one of the busiest international airports in the world, and it's experiencing both a surge of travellers, as well as a shortage of workers. As a result, thousands of people are leaving the airport while their bags stay behind. There just aren't enough workers to keep up with the volume of luggage passing through the airport.

Airline lost a lot of bags

Recently, Delta Airlines' passengers lost their luggage due to operational chaos at Heathrow. That is, until Delta came up with a brilliant idea. The passengers reunited with their belongings when the carrier deployed a wide-body aircraft to bring 1,000 bags back to the US.

delta

But, came up with a brilliant idea

Delta loaded up the Airbus A330 with all the pieces of luggage and flew them to Detroit where they could be transported to wherever the passengers ended up. Delta¡¯s ¡°creative solution¡± came after it cancelled regularly scheduled London-to-Detroit Flight 17 on July 11 because of passenger limits imposed by Heathrow, the Atlanta-based airline said Wednesday. Travellers were shifted to other flights, and Delta used the empty Airbus SE A330-200 to retrieve the lost bags.

A LOT of baggage piled up at Heathrow! Glad my bag was not among this mountain. pic.twitter.com/5IqOBH8UL4

¡ª Lebby Eyres (@LebbyE) June 18, 2022

¡°We¡¯ve gone as far as recently we had a separate charter just to repatriate bags back to customers that have been stranded because of some of the operational issues,¡± Chief Executive Officer Ed Bastian said on a conference call to discuss quarterly financial results.

Obviously, airlines have had a rough go. First, the pandemic brought air travel to a virtual halt. Then, as people started getting on planes, it has been hard to manage the balance between a surge in passengers and a shortage of staff.

Heathrow has struggled to keep up with bags over the past few weeks because of under-staffing and a surge in travel. The crisis has led luggage to pile up after some passengers were forced to leave the terminals without their bags.

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