Around 600 unclaimed bags are still to be processed at Edinburgh Airport following a huge hold-up.
Menzies Aviation said the total has reduced since Tuesday, with the company joining Swissport in a bid to tackle their way through a backlog of luggage. Menzies said the 600 remaining bags would be processed "relatively quickly" - and admitted a lack of staff throughout the whole aviation industry has made it difficult to provide a flawless service while they train new recruits, reports The Scottish Daily Express.
Corporate affairs director John Geddes admitted the company had "dropped the ball" by failing to communicate with passengers, which he also said was unacceptable. However, Mr Geddes was unable to give an accurate timeline on when the process would revert back to normal or how long the company's temporary storage facility in Ingliston would be needed.
He said: "We are in the eye of a storm at the moment. The situation is relatively bad, so I would like to think it won't get worse.
"We wholeheartedly apologise for the miscommunication that has taken place, but we are under immense pressure at the moment. If I was a consumer coming through the airport, I would absolutely understand the frustrations, and where we and the industry could have done better.
"That is simple things like making sure the desks were staffed, ensuring the phones were answered, making sure the communication is first class, and that's what we are working on at the moment. That's where we have fallen short of the standards that we set ourselves.
"It's unacceptable for the phone not to be answered and it's unacceptable for us not to communicate. We have dropped the ball communication-wise and I'm very upset about that.
"We will apologise to every passenger who has not been communicated with properly. We are stretched, but it is getting better as each week goes by.
"We will make sure that doesn't happen again. Our people at the airport are not people who don't care - they do care."
Mr Geddes explained most of the lost baggage was from Edinburgh -bound passengers changing planes at hub airports like Heathrow, Amsterdam and Frankfurt.
Menzies, which operates at 235 airports worldwide, handles baggage at Edinburgh for airlines such as British Airways and Lufthansa, with BA's Heathrow-Edinburgh the Scottish capital's busiest.
He said: "When the hub doesn't work, all the spokes coming off the hub really struggle."
Edinburgh is suffering from being a destination airport which is fed through a lot of airlines that come through hub airports, which Mr Geddes stressed had created a "mountain of bags".
He said: "There's a huge issue at Heathrow with staff shortages and some bags aren't getting on the plane at all. We are regularly having aircraft arrive in Edinburgh with 50 bags short, or occasionally a plane arrives with 150 passengers, but none of their bags.
"To have planes arriving with no bags on board is unheard of. If planes turn up with 150 bags missing, that throws your whole operation into chaos, especially if you don't know what's going to happen. The scale of this is something I have never seen.
"In the normal course of events, you have one or two staff dealing with that, but this is off the scale - we have had 3,000 bags at one point."
Mr Geddes said Menzies had called on the UK Government to speed up security checks on new staff, which he said were taking "far too long". He said regulations over issuing airport passes had tightened since Brexit, with references from applicants' past five years of employment now required - which could be seven or eight jobs.
He said: "We have to write to people, including the hospitality sector which is under huge pressure too and which may not have human resources departments to handle random reference requests. But if these people have been working, there will be HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) records, and checks could be made through those. The UK Government red tape is taking us 90 days at times to get people an airside pass."
A UK Department for Transport spokesperson said: "Last month we unveiled a 22-point plan to support the aviation industry, including accelerated national security vetting checks to help speed up recruitment."
Don't miss the latest news from around Scotland and beyond - Sign up to our daily newsletter here .
READ NEXT:
- Glasgow homeless hotel ordered to clean up their act after Record exposed filthy conditions
- Ex-girlfriend of 'jet-ski Romeo' dodges jail after kicking policeman in the head
- Scots mum who spent £250 on kid’s birthday party fuming after getting six plates of nibbles for 28 guests
- Scots mum saves toddler from drowning in pond at Glasgow park
- Scots couple's dream cruise for 25th wedding anniversary ruined after suitcases lost
