20,000 Lost Bags and Counting …
… and now they’re bringing in FedEx to help sort out the crisis. That’s the word from the new $8.6 billion Terminal 5 at London’s Heathrow, which opened amid great fanfare (including the Queen) which has been nothing short of a nightmare since. Interestingly, the PR folks handling the T-5 opening have been hawking the media for coverage for several months. Haven’t heard a word from them since the opening.
It’s also interesting that a search of press releases of BAA, the airport operator of Heathrow, reveals nothing about the debacle. Not a mention. British Airways, the airline which is attempting to operate out of T-5, has “We’re Sorry” pasted on its home page. That’s a start.
According to British Airways, “We are operating the vast majority of flights to and from Heathrow Terminal 5. We continue to work towards increasing the number of flights we operate in the days ahead and plan to fly 92 per cent of our flying programme to and from Terminal 5 by Thursday 3 April.” It’s reported that thousands of bags are being shipped to Milan for sorting.
According to www.airport-technology.com, the T-5 baggage system is the largest in Europe for a single terminal, which it says was designed by an integrated team from BAA, BA, and Vanderlande Industries of the Netherlands. It is intended to process 70,000 bags a day.
Opening a new airport or terminal is of course a significant undertaking. There’s a book in there somewhere. It took the new Denver International nearly an additional year and a half to open in the mid-90s, again due to a high-tech baggage system that never did work and is now being dismantled. At Austin-Bergstrom International, officials first opened the airport to cargo operations to get the airfield bugs out before opening it to passenger service – probably a good idea. Yet, they did the same thing at the new Hong Kong airport and it still had issues upon fully opening.
There are lessons to be learned from the T-5 experience. We just have to find out what they are first.
Thanks for reading. jfi
And hence, the reason I wrote my new book for the air travel consumer called The Empty Carousel a Consumer’s Guide to Checked and Carry-on Luggage.
Almost 5 million travlers in 2007 stood scratching their heads at an “Empty Carousel” when they reached their destination according to the front page of the New York Times last November.
A report recently released to Fox News 35 by the TSA stated, over 40,000 claims of pilfered items were reported to the TSA over the last 3 years which exceeds a value 31 Million dollars. These reported claims do not take into account the additional claims made directly to the air carriers.
As a veteran of the airline industry for almost 20 years and former manager of the system baggage services for a regional airline, I decided to offer my insider knowledge the air traveler needs to know to protect themselves and their property when they travel.
I am also working on getting my book into the airport book stores nation wide. If we educate our air travel consumers on what they can do and the entire baggage process, we will all win in the end, airports, airlines, TSA, the traveler, our baggage service representatives who handle these folks face to face.
I am committed to making a difference with this rapidly increasing problem with checked and carry-on luggage.
Best Regards,
Scott T. Mueller
Author The Empty Carousel a Consumer’s Guide to Checked and Carry-on Luggage.
Scott@TheEmptyCarousel.com
http://www.TheEmptyCarousel.com
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