Bags being returned to T5 passengers, says BA chief

The chief executive of British Airways tonight issued a fresh apology to travellers caught up in the Heathrow Terminal 5 fiasco but insisted the new facility would be a success.

Willie Walsh said BA was holding 19,000 bags in temporary storage – rather than 28,000 as the Government said earlier – and hoped to start returning 5,000 of them to their owners tomorrow.

But the airline boss warned it would take some time to return all the bags because they have to be processed manually.

Aviation Minister Jim Fitzpatrick told the House of Commons today that passengers using the new £4.3 billion terminal had suffered “an unacceptably poor experience”.

Passengers should get the assistance and compensation to which they were entitled, he said.

BA had to cancel a further 54 flights at T5 today, with another 50 being axed tomorrow.

Mr Fitzpatrick said that T5’s baggage system had become “clogged” and had stopped functioning on a number of occasions in the days since the terminal opened last Thursday.

Mr Walsh told Jeff Randall Live on Sky News: “We’ve got about 19,000 bags.

“Of those, we are currently processing 5,000 that we hope to start dispatching to customers tomorrow. So we are getting bags back.

“But this is a labour-intensive process because we’re not using the T5 baggage system to what we call reflight these bags. We’re doing this manually and clearly it will take time.”