British Airways passengers finally reunited with baggage after day of ‘chaos’

British Airways passengers whose baggage was left behind during severe disruption on Sunday have now been reunited with their luggage.

They have been telling The Independent about problems with BA flights that began early on Sunday morning.

One passenger, who wishes to remain anonymous, began his account at 7.30am at London Gatwick airport. He and his wife were booked to fly to Madeira.

He reported from the queue for British Airways at South Terminal: “It is chaos. We’ve been queuing for 90 minutes now. Luckily we got here early for an 8.25am departure.”

BA blamed “a temporary issue with baggage systems at a number of airports, which was outside our control, that impacted all airlines”. But at Gatwick, passengers for British Airways were kept in a separate queue that extended back through a corridor to the main vehicle entrance.

Passengers booked in business class, or those with Gold and Silver membership of the BA Club were invited to skip the queue.

The Madeira-bound passenger was extracted from the queue at 7.40am because so little time remained before his departure. But only one of the couple’s bags appeared on the baggage carousel at the destination – the other had been left at Gatwick. It was finally delivered to them at 9.30pm on Monday night.

A spokesperson for Gatwick said: “At 5.10am, a global IT issue with the Baggage Source Message system provided by [aviation communications firm] Sita impacted multiple airports including Gatwick.

“Contingencies were put in place to enable passenger check in to continue. The system returned back 6.35am and all check-in systems were operating as normal by 7.09am.

“We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

“Separately, British Airways is still experiencing a BA technical issue with its self-service machines, which may cause delays for some passengers.”

Meanwhile at London Heathrow Terminal 5, Natalie Wilson – travel writer for The Independent – reported “huge queues” while trying to check in for a flight to Nice.

"They were able to print luggage tags, but all customers were then told to leave tagged hold bags in a penned-off area in the terminal where they would be ‘organised by a machine’.

“Before take off at 7.30am, our pilot said that the baggage belt issue had just been fixed and all bags had made it onto our flight except for 30, and that these would be travelling on the next flight out 50 minutes late.”

In fact, Ms Wilson’s luggage was flown out on Monday and reached her just before midnight.

Disruption on Sunday was exacerbated by storms in western Europe. A later British Airways flight from Heathrow to Nice was delayed flying south, arriving 80 minutes late. The return leg did not take off until 11.13pm local time, meaning it would breach the noise curfew at Heathrow.

The flight was diverted to Birmingham, where it arrived at 12.10am. BA says passengers were given hotel rooms and buses were provided for the journey to Heathrow.

The Airbus A319 made the 87-mile journey back to the British Airways base on Monday afternoon.