Thousands Of Suitcases Pile Up At London's Heathrow Airport, Viral Picture Stuns Netizens
"We're in contact with affected customers to apologise, advise them of their consumer rights and offer them alternative options, including a refund or rebooking," a spokesperson for the airline said.
Thousands of suitcases lay sprawled across the floor of London's Heathrow airport after the baggage system in Terminal 2 faced a "technical issue" on Saturday.
In what could be seen in viral images and videos, hundreds of passenger bags were heaped in Terminal 2 of the airport without any staff around due to a glitch in the system.
Twitterati stunned
Passengers reportedly waited for many hours for their bags while some had to leave without getting their bags back, BBC News reported. Some even posted photos and videos of the chaotic sea of baggage on Twitter.
Lost luggage has a final resting place perhaps¡.@HeathrowAirport T2¡mine¡¯s the black one (I think) pic.twitter.com/u0tDMTgFHj
¡ª Stuart Dempster (@StuDempster) June 17, 2022
Suddenly a slight wait for my luggage to arrive at @HeathrowAirport is even more of an irrelevance - at least it came on the same flight and is leaving with me¡ pic.twitter.com/h42BfCe0mo
¡ª Deborah Haynes (@haynesdeborah) June 17, 2022
Heard from ground staff that all of Friday¡¯s lost bags (around 8000) have been moved away from #Heathrow T2 into containers. Will take at least 1 week to start reuniting passengers with their luggage. Bags from yesterday/today are still lying around (see pic) and will take longer pic.twitter.com/83FATFbOTX
¡ª HeathrowChaos (@ChaosHeathrow) June 19, 2022
Passengers asked to leave without bags
In some cases, passengers were even asked to leave and were told that their luggage will reach them in a period of 1-2 days.
Absolute chaos at #Heathrow where all passengers are asked to drop their baggages at level 0 and hope it will reach destination one or two days later. pic.twitter.com/rLKuyNlrGk
¡ª Giovanni Gaetani (@giovannigaetani) June 17, 2022
A user tweeted a video from inside the airport where he said that "all the baggage belts in Terminal 2 of the airport had stopped working". "We had to que up our luggage and we were told that security would watch it so that we could go through security, and maybe our luggage might make it to the plane with a 50-50 shot."
As mentioned on the last episode, travel and airport chaos is real! Today the luggage belts stopped working at Heathrow! Cooler heads prevailed! Let's still blame Trudeau? ??¡á???¡á??@ItsDeanBlundell @DBlundellNet @ryanlindley @LochlinCross#airportchaos#Heathrow pic.twitter.com/VGn6tJQiQL
¡ª Brenton.On.Tour.Podcast (@brentonontour) June 19, 2022
Asked airlines to cancel flights
To curb the crisis, Heathrow asked airlines flying off from Terminals 2 and 3 to cancel 10 percent of their flights for the day due to baggage handling issues, The Independent reported. As many as 15,000 passengers on 90 flights are estimated to be affected.
British Airways, which operates a number of flights from Terminal 3 and Terminal 5, stated that it had made ¡°a small number of cancellations¡±.
"We're in contact with affected customers to apologise, advise them of their consumer rights and offer them alternative options, including a refund or rebooking," a spokesperson for the airline said.
Heathrow issues apology
According to a report by the BBC, a spokesperson for Heathrow airport apologised for the chaos and the delay.
Hi there, We're very sorry that the technical issue with our baggage system caused this delay, our airline partners will be working to deliver luggage, and we trust your airline will provide you with an update soon. For airline contact information, visit: https://t.co/tNNHwETNKM
¡ª Heathrow Airport (@HeathrowAirport) June 18, 2022
"Earlier today there was a technical issue with the Terminal 2 baggage system which has now been resolved. Passengers are now able to check-in as normal, but a number of passengers who departed from Terminal 2 earlier today may have travelled without their luggage. We are working closely with airlines to reunite passengers with their luggage as soon as possible. We're sorry there's been disruption to passenger journeys,¡± she stated.
Heathrow airport is the UK's largest and busiest airport as well as being the busiest airport in Europe and the seventh busiest in the world based on passenger traffic.
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