Passengers on two delayed flights into Bristol Airport in the early hours of this morning have described ‘foul’ scenes as hundreds of people waited up to three hours for their bags to be moved from the plane to the airport terminal.
Bristol Airport has apologised to passengers for the issues, which saw parents with young children having to let them sleep ‘on the cold floor’ because their buggies and pushchairs weren’t returned to them while they waited. People slept on the stationary conveyor belts while others complained of a lack of information from staff in the early hours.
The issues appear to have affected two TUI flights that were delayed taking off from their holiday destinations - one from Larnaca in Cyprus and the other from the Greek island of Kos. The Larnaca flight was supposed to land at Bristol airport at five to one in the morning this morning, but didn’t touch down until 2.40am, while the flight from Kos was due in at 2.25am but didn’t land until 4.25am.
Updates: Latest from Bristol Airport
Passengers already delayed by that then found they weren’t being reunited with their luggage - for hours, and were left in the baggage reclaim area, which has minimal facilities. Bethan Wills described it as ‘foul scenes’. “Kids sleeping on the floor, baggage claims have over a three-hour wait for luggage. Delayed flights, delayed baggage, not a single staff member in sight and no one given a pram coming off their flight with hours of delays,” she said, before calling on TUI to ‘do better for your customers’.
Bristol Airport apologised for the delays. The baggage on most flights are handled by a separate company called Swissport, unless the airlines employ their own baggage handlers - which TUI do not. “Do better for your customers too,” Bethan told Bristol Airport. “I have a one-year-old and a three-year-old sleeping on cold floors. There’s newborn babies, young children wanting to go home. Absolutely disgusting. Quick to take the business, not quick enough to see to all the children traumatised by this experience," she added.
Her partner Elson added: “We arrived at Bristol at 4.30am, and had to wait on the plane for 10 to 15 minutes as there were no stairs to de-board us. Then we were sat in baggage ever since, my two sons have had to sleep on the floor and to make it worse there weren’t any staff members around to tell us what was going on
“Prams were also not released upon arrival, they came out with baggage meaning parents with newborns and younger children really struggled too. There was awful communication, and took two to three hours from when baggage from the flight from Larnaca arrived to the baggage for Kos being released, whilst passengers from Larnaca had three hours to wait beforehand too,” he added.
Another passenger, Chloe, tweeted her frustration. “I saw my bag coming off the plane the same time as me, so where is it?” she asked Bristol Airport. “Where is our luggage? Two flights worth of people sleeping on conveyor belts for hours waiting for luggage to appear. I have a five-month-old baby with me. There’s kids and babies sleeping on the floor and no announcements to tell us anything,” she added.
Caron Lewis was also on the flight, and described the situation as an ‘utter shambles’. “We were met by chaos at Bristol. The flight before ours had been waiting three hours for luggage. We are still sitting here over two hours after getting off our flight,” she told Bristol Live just before 7am.
At 6am, Bristol Airport apologised to passengers who were complaining. “We are very sorry about this and the experience you have had. We have passed your feedback to TUI. We are unable to get hold of the team at the moment,” they said. At 6am, a spokesperson at the airport told another passenger who complained: “The TUI crew were in the area but had to depart. Swissport who provide the service for TUI are currently offloading bags.”
Bristol Live has contacted Swissport for a response.
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