A black hole called Terminal 5

Checking a bag with British Airways is like rolling dice: 

Terminal 5 came in for renewed criticism yesterday after it emerged that passengers transferring between planes at Heathrow’s troubled new £4.3bn building are losing more than 900 bags a day.

Trade union officials said T5’s baggage handling system still needed improvement and travellers on connecting flights have a one in 12 chance of being separated from their luggage…932 bags miss their onward journey from the terminal on a daily basis.

But BA calls this improvement 

BA said T5’s overall performance had improved significantly since the March 27 opening and the airport’s overall missing baggage numbers had fallen since last year, with eight bags a thousand going missing. A BA spokesman said: “All major hub airports have issues in making sure that transfer bags travel between flights in the same way that transfer passengers do. This is due to the complexities of baggage procedures and how bags are moved through a series of security systems to get loaded on to their next aircraft.” - The Guardian, London

The recent word was that Heathrow Termimal 5 was improving after its disastrous opening several mothis ago, but figures don’t lie. BA is in no danger of losiing its unofficial slogan: “Fly the flag, lose the bag.” 

(Thanks to OBOW reader Mike for referring this one) 

Comments

[Johnny A]

So true--a simple transfer of my bag from Sofia > Heathrow T5 > Phoenix was dropped despite having 24 hours to make the transfer, and both incoming and outgoing flights were BA flights into T5! It's been two days and I think it *may* show up today . . .