A passenger has vowed to "never travel with British Airways again" after waiting for longer than five hours for his suitcases at baggage - only to return home without his belongings.
Andrew Stemp, 56, from Kent was travelling with a partner on flight BA409 on Thursday, May 25 from Valencia to London’s Heathrow Airport with the plane arriving on time at 4.11pm at terminal three.
He had enjoyed a holiday in Spain, only for his return to descend into a stressful airport nightmare when his baggage was nowhere to be seen after landing.
Mr Stemp also claims the baggage hall had broken vending machines and only one trolley offering limited refreshments for passengers waiting leaving him hungry and thirsty during his long wait, reports the Express.
He said passengers received conflicting information, explaining: “First we were told there were no drivers available to get our luggage. Then we were told systems had broken down and staff had no idea where our luggage was. Whenever we asked the customer service team what was happening, they just shrugged their shoulders.”
The management consultant described how there was no BA staff available to assist with the problem. After waiting for four hours, at 8pm, an announcement was made saying “a driver had been sent” to collect the luggage from the aircraft within the hour. At 9pm it had still not arrived.
Mr Stemp said: “While we were waiting, we saw other passengers from other airlines come and go with their luggage. It was only BA passengers that were left waiting. I didn’t believe a word that was said after a while, because their story kept changing with regards to what had happened to luggage.”
The management consultant also explained he was helping other non-native English speakers of all ages in the airport with form filling and announcements, as there was no help for them and they were “left alone” with no help.
Mr Stemp said: “At the moment, I have had no communication from British Airways and we are still waiting for our luggage. BA is a joke of an airline. I have been travelling with the airline since about 1990, and after this experience yesterday I am never going to take the risk of travelling with them again.”
Mr Stemp explained bottles of water and biscuits were offered on a food trolley to passengers once during the five hours wait, but there was not enough for everybody.
Speaking to Express.co.uk, British Airways has revealed some services left without some customer’s bags on Thursday, May 25 to ensure these flights were able to depart as planned. The airline says teams are working hard to get all bags onto the next available flights and customers will be updated once there is further information.
British Airways released the following statement: “While the vast majority of our flights continue to operate today, we have cancelled some of our short-haul flights from Heathrow due to the knock-on effect of a technical issue that we experienced yesterday. We've apologised to customers whose flights have been affected and offered them the option to rebook to an alternative flight with us or another carrier or request a refund.”
Heathrow Airport has told Express.co.uk: “The airport doesn’t play a role in managing incoming baggage, arriving baggage is handled by the airline and their ground handlers.”
It also added because British Airways experienced technical issues that resulted in delays and cancellations of flights, it had an impact on the ability to “repatriate baggage.”
The Independent states the airline cancelled more than 150 flights following an IT failure on Thursday affecting mostly domestic and European departures. The issue is likely to affect thousands of British travellers flying over the bank holiday weekend.
According to Cirium data, this bank holiday weekend is set to be a busy period for UK travellers with 11,356 flights scheduled to depart all UK airports, equating to over two million seats.
