fruitcage

A few days ago I arrived at LHR T5 on a 90 min delayed flight at almost exactly midnight (BA691 on 12 Aug). As we were taxiing, there was an announcement to the effect that as there weren't many baggage handlers around so late it would probably take a very long time for any baggage to arrive, so passengers may prefer to just abandon their baggage and file a missing bag report online. Of course there was then a lot of grumbling from most of the passengers.

In the baggage hall, there were no staff visible except at the First/Club desk, which already had a long queue, so it was impossible to ask whether there would indeed be a delay for the bags from our flight (even if anybody would have known). There were also lots of grumpy people waiting around for baggage from previous flights, and one chap said he'd waited 2 hours for his bag already, but couldn't abandon it as he had a flight out the next day.

(As it happened we got very lucky - We had almost decided to leave without our bags when the carousel started and the bags for our flight popped out - probably quicker than they usually do.)

So the question is - is it normal that late-night arrivals should expect crazy-long delays to receive bags, and so pax are warned to just abandon their luggage (good job we ignored the advice as it turned out). Or was there something special going on that evening which made it a truly exceptional situation?