A woman who flew into Heathrow with British Airways late last night waited two hours in the airport before being told her bags would not be unloaded from the plane for at least five hours from the time they arrived. Mary Gregory said the airport was in “chaos” and left her worried and anxious.
“It was just chaos, there were people with young children,” she said. “There was a family with two young children who were just absolutely exhausted.” Having arrived at the bag collection at around 11.30pm, Mary and her partner waited in the airport for two hours for their bags to come through.
Mary, from Harefield, Hillingdon, told MyLondon : “The really annoying thing was that we arrived and all the flights were affected. They were announcing flights one by one, saying: ‘We are now giving this flight attention’ – which didn’t mean it was coming through. We were there for about two hours and we thought we’d just keep waiting.”
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Eventually, Mary’s partner found a member of staff who informed them it would be the early shift who would be attending their flight – and the absolute earliest their luggage might come through would be 4:30am – five hours after the flight landed. At this point it was already 1:30am, and the couple decided to just go home.
Mary said: “The first chance of it coming through will be 4:30pm in the morning. But why didn’t they just announce that? We sat there like mugs for two hours hoping that our flight would be the next one that would come through. There was a just a complete lack of communication.
“They had to make a further announcement saying: ‘Please don’t hassle our staff. Just because we’ve announced it, doesn’t mean the bags will come through imminently.’ – but we couldn’t see any staff.”
What made the matter more stressful was Mary was unable to submit an online form reporting the missing baggage to make sure it would be delivered to the right place. She described the whole system as “very frustrating”, adding: “It just kept coming up that the system wouldn’t accept it. Their system’s just rubbish.”
This morning (April 15) Mary has been able to get through to British Airways on the phone and report her experience. The airline informed her that her bags should be delivered within 72 hours.
But Mary is still upset by the situation: “What I found difficult, was that it’s almost like it’s your problem, not theirs. It’s almost like you’re an inconvenience to them. There’s no accountability on their part. If your flight is delayed more than three hours you get compensated for that but having lost our bags there’s no accountability. It’s very frustrating.”
A spokesperson for British Airways said: “We’ve apologised to customers for delays in delivering their baggage due to operational challenges at Heathrow last night. We’re arranging for luggage to be returned to them via courier as soon as possible.”
MyLondon has contacted and Heathrow Airport for comment.
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