Originally Posted by
corporate-wage-slave
We may need to think of more radical solutions.
I bought a book from Amazon a few weeks ago. Despite being an English language book, produced by a major UK publisher for the UK market, not particularly obscure, Amazon nevertheless stocked it in their warehouse in Madrid. I ordered it on Monday, Tuesday it was in East Midlands Airport (off a cargo flight) , Wednesday it was in my particularly obscure corner of England. Maybe BA could look at linking Airportr with cargo flights. Collect your bag on day1, or even drop it off at designated locations, it will be in your hotel in MAD / NYC / FRA / BeNeLux when you arrive on day 3. Now there will be what-ifs, but air cargo sector was not hit by COVID-19 as much as the rest of the aviation industry so is currently better placed than passenger services.
There were some tentative attempts at getting Amazon involved in baggage logistics, especially with Amazon's retail transport arm selling extra capacity, back pre-Covid. It ended in nothing because of the need to scan bags and accessing non-Amazon warehouses and installations. Doesn't mean that it can't be done, though, and it'd be super good in shaking up a bit the baggage courier industry (which is largely made of non very reputable companies).
Originally Posted by
RGS5526
How much of the ground handling and baggage delay is caused by HMG following a Walsh-Cruz approach to staffing the civil service, so that the part responsible for carrying out the security checks needed for cannot cope with current demand, leading to delays in deploying sufficient baggage handlers, for example, to meet current demand.
I've just applied for a basic criminal record check through DBS (used to be Disclosure Scotland, now it seems to be done this side of Hadrian's Wall). From sending the request to receipt of the paperwork it was about one week in total which is quite fast.
The problem is the pass issue unit over at HAL. That'll be a whole different matter... Right now I can see no appointments available this side of November, by which time I'll need a new record check!