Saturday 25 June 2022 03:51 PM Heathrow terminal is swamped by sea of loose luggage with passengers left to ... trends now

Fresh chaos has been piled on passengers at Heathrow Airport today as holidaymakers yet again endured issues at baggage reclaim. 

Arrivals at Terminal 2 and 3 saw a sea of luggage spilling out across the airport as they landed from Amsterdam, Canada and India while staff reportedly told anxious customers 'sorry, the whole industry in a mess'. 

One passenger who was at the airport yesterday questioned if it was 'safe and secure' to leave customers' 'days old baggage' strewn at reclaim when people have arrived home. 

Another passenger who was at Heathrow saw baggage lying at various points of baggage reclaim and passengers waiting in hope at conveyer belts while they waited for their luggage to arrive. 

Airports have been plagued for months by check-in delays, flight cancellations and baggage issues at UK airports which experts have blamed on widespread staff shortages in the industry. 

And thousands of British Airways staff including cabin crew and engineers have threatened to plunge airports and airlines into yet more chaos during the school holidays.

Unions are asking over 16,000 workers if they want to join the more than 700 BA staff who have already committed to a walk-out over pay at Heathrow Airport during the summer.

Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary said yesterday that one of the issues with recruitment in the UK stems from 'British people not wanting to be baggage handlers' as he said his Irish company has not faced the same issues. 

ITV's Nick Dixon, correspondent at Good Morning Britain, arrived from Amsterdam at Terminal 3 in Heathrow to see piles of baggage at arrivals. 

Mr Dixon said: '[I'm] trying to locate my lost bag and staff just said “sorry, the whole industry in a mess."' 

Fellow GMB colleague Kieron Clarke said: 'I am still to be reunited with my luggage, which is in another part of Heathrow along with thousands of other items. Unfortunately, staff cannot access them. 

'Worse still, those items are now being sent from London to Amsterdam for processing because of a lack of staff in the UK.'

Ashley Burke, a reporter at CBC’s Parliamentary Bureau, also said on Twitter when she arrived there was a 10 min delay on the plan but quick walk through security of about 15 mins. 

She didn't check a bag but said she saw 'scattered [luggage] everywhere in the baggage claim area'.

A TUI rep was seen today telling passengers that their flight to Palma has been delayed for 12 hours. Customers were then pictured sitting on floors at Manchester Airport to wait out the delay in another airline issue while more beleaguered passengers waited to check in and drop off their bags at other airlines including Pegasus and TUI. 

Yesterday passengers also had to endure long queues at Bristol, Birmingham, Edinburgh, and Glasgow Airports. Many airports experts have pointed to recruitment post-Covid as the underlining issue.

However, Ryanair - largely based in London Stanstead and Dublin Airports - appears to have escaped largely unscathed from the mess, according to the Telegraph.     

Between May 7 and June 6, the low cost airline had three cancellations out of its 13,099 flights (0.02%) compared with 142 out of 13,010 (1.09%) British Airways flights. While easyJet had 16,425 flights with 636 (3.87%) cancelled. 

Ryanair - which is based in Dublin, Ireland - has 19,000 staff which it recruits from across Europe. 

It's boss has largely blamed Europe's inflexible Labour market for other airlines like BA and easyJet having to cancel flights.

Mr O'Leary told the Telegraph that Ryanair has been 'completely unaffected' as unlike some airlines it saw the recovery coming 'early'.

He added: 'I'm not re-campaigning on Brexit, but the UK is going to have to find a way to open up the Labour market between the UK and Europe, to get people in here to do the jobs which frankly British people don't want to do.

'They don't want to pick fruit, they don't want to do agricultural labour, they don't want to do hospitality or security or baggage handling at airports.' 

John Grant, chief analyst at global travel data provider OAG, said unlike BA, Ryanair is not 'reliant' on UK labour. 

He added: 'EasyJet has access to a wider range of labour, but most of its bases are in major Western European countries which are facing similar resource issues to the UK. 

'Ryanair has a much broader range of bases across the whole of Europe and during the pandemic retained a larger proportion of its staff in some of those bases, particularly in Eastern Europe.'

Gilbert Ott, creator of flight tips website God Save the Points, said Ryanair is also an 'uncomplicated' airline with one aircraft, the Boeing 737, and short-haul European services.

He said: I think many people don't realise how many weeks it takes to get staff through the safety checks required to fly again, particularly pilots. 

'Furthermore, European countries were the first to signal a big summer of restriction-free travel, which gave Ryanair ample opportunity to scale up and be aggressive.'

Mr O'Leary said that his cabin crew staff - who need to be retrained for eight weeks if their working hours lapse - and pilots - who need to fly every month to not lose their licence - were in the sky 'well ahead of the expected recovery'.

He added: 'We made sure, even if we had flights with no passengers, we sent up pilots and cabin crew. 

'We sent everybody flying at least once a month. We didn't dump them all at home and say, "We'll call you in 18 months when this is all over''

Those returning to Britain also faced possible disruption as Ryanair cabin crew staff began a three-day walkout in Belgium, France, Italy, Portugal and Spain yesterday.

The biggest impact was felt in Belgium, where the work stoppage led Europe's biggest budget airline to cancel 127 flights to and from Charleroi airport near Brussels between Friday and Sunday.

Ryanair could only guarantee 30 to 40 per cent of its scheduled flights at the airport, said a spokesman for Brussels South Charleroi Airport.

In response Mr O'Leary said cabin crew with annual salaries of £24,000 and £45,000 are 'delighted' to be back in their jobs and 'working post-Covid'. 

He added: 'Everyone can afford to pay their rent. This idea that people are on minimum wage or they don't get paid when they don't fly – it's complete rubbish. 

'He dismisses the potential disruption as affecting 'less than one per cent' of the company's operations across Europe.'

More than 700 Heathrow check-in and ground-handling staff voted for industrial action in a row over pay. The GMB and Unite unions are expected to set strike dates for around July 22, when the school break begins.

According to aviation data firm Cirium, nearly 1.8 million BA customers are set to fly out from Heathrow during July.

Nadine Houghton, GMB national officer, said: 'With grim predictability, holidaymakers face massive disruption thanks to the pig-headedness of British Airways.

'BA have tried to offer our members crumbs from the table in the form of a 10 per cent one-off bonus payment, but this doesn't cut the mustard.

'Our members need to be reinstated the 10 per cent they had stolen from them last year with full back pay and the 10 per cent bonus which other colleagues

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