Baggage Chaos, T5 19th Feb
 

Hi Everyone

I'm surprised to have not found any thread about this so far, so feel free to point me in the right direction if this has been posted about already.

Last night at T5 there was an announcement over the tannoy that no bags would be delivered tonight, leaving thousands of people scrambling to fill in a border force form regarding missing baggage. All baggage belt were off and the screens at each carousel were showing flights as 'awaiting bags' from several hours ago. Twitter is blowing up about this but BA or Heathrow don't seem to be helping. We were all asked to leave the terminal and come back in a few days to get our luggage or request that it be sent to us, but this would take longer.

If anyone else was there last night, and has had any success, please could you let me know what I can do?

Thanks
James

I’ve just been talking a friend who had family on the BA flight to Vancouver yesterday. They have reported that there was no luggage loaded at all on the aircraft. Also departure was significantly delayed.
further update……..
Flight departed 3 hours late. Pax were initially told onboard delay was due to waiting for bags to be loaded. Arrived into Vancouver 3 and half hours late.

Per the Eunice disruption thread i had a 2 hour wait after landing to eventually get off our flight, to be greeted to the baggage chaos - it was a total shambles with limited information shared very infrequently. Clearly absent the Eunice disruption, T5 ground handling staffing seems extremely thin. Got fed up of waiting in the queue for the forms so filled in a missing baggage request on the BA website and have sent through the customs form via email. I haven't yet heard anything from BA.

We flew to Geneva yesterday afternoon and sat on the tarmac for 1.5 hours after an already late boarding. Captain said a shortage of ground crew meant the bags from the inbound flight were slow to be offloaded and the bags for our flight even slower to be loaded. Took off over 3 hours late, strong tail wind meant we made up just enough time to avoid EC261 claims.Looked like a lot of people in Geneva were searching for bags on arrival. Lucky we got ours.

Absolute chaos on arrival from the USoA this morning. Announcements of at least two hours to wait or go home and file a claim. Had small kids and didn’t need the bags urgently so we left. Will file claim shortly. What really surprised me was the lack of explanation or apology.

Yes, it was a mess. I arrived from LAS at 2:50pm yesterday. A minor 20 minutes delay waiting for someone to operate the gantry on arrival. No biggie I thought. My connection up to Man, BA1402 @ 18:25, was cancelled at about 19:30, along with a number of other local Uk flights. First lounge ended up with a queue of about 15 pax waiting to speak to someone. Announcement was made as stated in earlier posts. Also recieved a number of emails from BA. One stated to continue journey and make a baggage claim. Another was for a rebooking onto the 07:45 am flight to Man. This 07:45 has also been cancelled and rebooked onto the 17:25 today. ::update17:25 also cancelled::

Needless to say I took an Uber home last night.

The queue to leave the terminal last night from gate 17 must have been the largest I have ever seen. I can only guess the number of people. Perhaps a thousand, maybe more.

I have a photo close to gate 17, but it does not really show the true extent of the chaos.

It’s still chaos this morning. Just arrived on the 296 from Chicago. Arrived late, then waited 40 mins at a remote stand for buses to arrive, and now facing an unknown wait for bags in a pretty packed baggage hall.

The flight from St Lucia landed at 9:42 and its bags have just appeared nearly four hours later…

A tale of two staff members…
 

We arrived Friday evening on a delayed domestic. I made the massive error of collecting the wrong bag from the belt - same as mine :( - never done this before and realised at the hotel reception in central London. Nightmare.

Hot footed it back to LHR to return the bag and collect mine to find literally zero BA staff anywhere in the terminal and no help on the phone. In the interim call from hotel to advise the couple whose bag we had were at the same hotel!! Confirmed name and flight details - had seen our bag last on the carousel and twigged what we had done. Delighted to reunite them and apologies ++

Next morning returned to LHR to find a queue on people at a single phone point in arrivals and no BA staff present. Total nightmare. Eventually staff arrived and one was unhelpful ++ and basically took my tag, looked it up, said it’s ‘not here’ as last scanned onto the belt then nothing since so someone ‘must have taken it’. About to leave the airport having been told ‘fill a form in’ only to have a phone call from another staff member (James) who had also taken my details and was searching the left bags for my case.

Gave a basic description, he found it and escorted me through the arrivals security to collect it. Amazing service. Golden ticket sent and told him how grateful I was. Other staff member less so…

Was left with the impression the customer facing bag handling support at LHR is less well staffed than a basic outstation airport. How is this the case? Forgive the pun (!)

Seen on twitter, looks like T5.

After a three plus hour deal BA85 to Vancouver finally arrived only to be told zero passenger luggage has been loaded at Heathrow. Cargo was loaded though. Ground staff handed out forms as we left the plane.

I will just buy the essentials and claim back from BA. And submit an EU261 for the delay even though it’s probably pointless.

Also, flight on Sunday 20th so luggage won’t arrive till Monday night at the earliest so lots of upset people with no ski gear heading up to Whistler and elsewhere.

crew were nice, although one or two crew got off the plane just before we departed so we were told flight was operated with minimum amount of crew possible. Their luggage wasn’t loaded either.

So much for 'Book with confidence'.

I am still here and confirm that this is what T5 currently looks like!

Lots of people heading off without baggage (having filed delayed baggage forms), but BA are saying that people should expect to wait 10 days or more to receive their baggage, so I’m going to carry on waiting it out. At least for a bit!

Book with the hope that…

you get to your destination
you get the service you paid for
you get your luggage

😏

I am sure we all will receive an email from Sean Doyle over the next few days explaining how all will get much better going forward and how hard they will work that something like this will never happen again.

Wife arrived with son last night on the BA568 which left 3 hours late but landed just under 3 hours late, what surprise.

Only Some Club Europe bags loaded.

Our son required some medication which meant she needed to leave the baggage area without filling in a form. It’s impossible to actually fill in the form or contact the BA luggage folk in Italy, as they don’t want to know about it and tell you to call back later. Spent over 3 hours calling today. I’ll probably just head in to Milan tomorrow to see what is going on.