Yeoman5

Got the dreaded email on arrival in MSY. I was puzzled. Ops at LHR on Saturday appeared normal with no unexpected events happening and I would say normal volume of passengers. The aircraft was on stand well ahead of time, catering loaded on time, passengers on board in advance of ETD, push backed bang on 1600. I guess BA will blame their ground handlers etc etc blah blah.
Thankfully my and Mrs Y's bags did arrive. I sympathise with those whose did not. Next flight arrives Tuesday.

FlyingCruiser

Don't they make an announcement about this onboard?

Surely the crew know before pushing bag exactly what is and isn't onboard?

Shingi

One of my bags didn’t make it to JNB in August. There were about 20 of us with some not getting any bags. One young couple were on a trip of a lifetime safari, poor things. Mine was delivered six days later. Definitely no on board announcement.

Added. Neither did I receive an email. I only received any further info as a result of reporting it at the BA desk.

vectismanpaul

The ground handlers at Heathrow are BA employees. My nephew and party are also without their luggage after landing. very disappointing!
Please keep us updated.

somersetbadger

Happened to us, LHR to JFK two weeks ago, got the text message but no other announcement. Waited for our luggage with around a third of the plane but finally announced there was no more luggage loaded. We were lucky in that we were stood next to ground staff that took us to the office to report, we were there completing forms for about 20 mins whilst a massive queue had built up behind us. Luggage was couriered to the hotel the next day.

This was the start of a short break from hell. No heavy duty rain coats as had 'thoughtfully' packed them in the front of the case, we got very wet finding the hotel, plus no dry clothes to change into, Two days later we both came down with a bad dose of Covid and spent a lot of the break in bed. Finally due to the torrential rain, we had to make a dash to the airport on the final day when the Governor of New York issued a state of emergency and said not to travel. Got to spend 4 hours in the lounge (the bar) and by the time we were on our way home slept through the whole journey missing my first club suite experience.

Yeoman5

No announcement was made on board. I guess they don't in order to avoid passengers making a fuss before take off.
I experienced a similar case some years ago when a couple of snowflakes shut LHR for two days near to Christmas. The pilot flew to Rome knowing no bags were loaded. One of our bags finally arrived on 26th, the other was never found.

rstruthe

Arrived in the Chicago, as I arrived at the baggage carousel they announced some bags hadn’t made it.
Waited and waited, finally they said all bags were off, if yours were not there go file a report. I knew my bags were in Chicago as they had AirTags in them.
Sadly headed over to start a report. Then the belt started moving again and another batch arrived including my priority tagged bags.

ManInExitRow

I can certainly assure you that the bag was indeed “found”.

becks1

I wonder if this is new, I’ve had happen a few times to LAX and usually an announcement happens. Sometimes, the staff are really organized and have a listed printed at the carousel so you can check if you should wait for your bag(s) or go directly to making a claim.

Once, the SFO ground team filled out all of my form ahead of my arrival except for what address I wanted the bag forwarded to - so thoughtful and proactive.

Yeoman5

yes, I am sure you're right. And that it was subsequently sold off with many others due to them not being able to repatriate it to its owner, despite contact details on the outside and inside.

Duck1981

wasn’t there a baggage handlers strike to happen from 6th to 9th?

tempted to say despite it was officially cancelled some baggage handlers might got a cold this weekend.

(I had to wait almost 1,5 hours to get my bag yesterday)

BearX220

I deplaned from a BA flight in Chicago this spring and ground staff had cello-taped printouts of 40 or 50 names to the jetway wall and recited loudly, over and over, "If your name is on this wall, your bags are still in London!"

IME they do not announce to the cabin that some or all bags did not make it aboard so as not to upset people in transit. I guess the strategy is to upset them immediately upon arrival. In any case that flight, like OP's, was on stand at T5 for a long time before departure, no apparent chaos going on, and we left about :30 late. No apparent reason for the fail.

flatlander

Does anyone know the actual nature of these "operational constraints"?

Are BA understaffed with baggage loaders, or is there something else going wrong?

chollie

Just one datapoint from a different airline (one that I fly even less frequently than BA) from last December.

FRA-AMM flight has been delayed. Pilot announces prior to takeoff that he personally had two choices: wait to finish loading bags, by which time the crew will have timed out and we'll all have an unplanned night in FRA, or take off without the bags. He promised more information later in the flight. He emphasized repeatedly that the decision had been his.

During the flight, more announcements, including suggesting that people start go online as soon as we landed. I actually didn't pay much attention because I only had carry-on, but there's a way to speed things up online - presumably the address(es) where you will be so that your bags can be delivered instead of waiting in a line late at night. He even announced where in the baggage claim area people should go and said he'd make sure a rep was there to help.

On landing, more profuse apologies and more reminders that the pilot took sole responsibility for deciding to go without some bags instead of cancelling the flight. (Given that this was heading into Christmas, I don't even want to think what our chances of a timely rebooking would have been like).

IRROPS happen - it's how the airline handles them that makes all the difference.

Shingi

In our case, we had checked in quite early for
JNB so probably amongst the first pax to do so. We used the D-I-Y check-in machine at LHR and I did notice that we didn’t get any J ‘priority’ labels given out but, hey-ho. When you’ve paid all that money you would
sort of expect your bags to be treated as priority. So, although we didn’t expect our bags to come off
the carousel quickly because of that, we were surprised when one of them didn’t show up at all and that our only other bag was one of the
last to show up. I also would to know why this happens. I must add that in around 12-13 trips to SA this was a first.