T5 luggage sorted by hand after new technical glitches

Baggage handlers at Heathrow’s Terminal 5 will continue to sort passengers’ luggage by hand throughout the weekend after the system was hit by further technical problems today.

BAA said staff and engineers would work overnight tonight and through tomorrow in an effort to minimise disruption to passengers and flights.

A software glitch on the £4.3bn (€5.4bn) building’s automated baggage system forced British Airways to cancel 24 flights today – 12 arrivals and 12 departures – as handlers resorted to the old-fashioned method of sorting bags manually.

Earlier today, the airline operator said a technical fault had been identified and efforts were being made to rectify it. But the problem has persisted.

A spokesman for the airport operator said tonight: “BAA staff and engineers from our contractors continue to work hard to resolve the difficulties with the T5 baggage system.

“To allow British Airways to operate a good flight schedule tomorrow, the manual elements of the baggage system will remain in place for the remainder of the weekend.

“Our staff will work through the night and during tomorrow to resolve the problems and we are sorry for the inconvenience this may cause to British Airways and passengers.

“The agreed course of action will minimise disruption.”

Today was meant to have been the day BA returned to normal operations at Terminal 5 following its shambolic opening more than a week ago.

But it was not to be. Within hours, problems began to emerge.

Today’s hiccough affected the baggage reconciliation system, which ensures passengers’ bags are only loaded on to planes which they are travelling on.

A BA spokeswoman said: “We are having to manually reconcile bags for each flight which takes considerably more time than using the automated system.

“We have had to cancel 12 return flights – that’s 12 to and 12 from, 24 flights in total.”

Alison Foulkes, 63, and her friend Jackie Spires, 67, both from Plymouth in Devon, were also among those stranded at Terminal 5 today.

Following the cancellation of their flight to Vienna, they managed to get booked on to another one at 6.10pm.

Ms Foulkes said: “It has been irritating. We thought for a moment that, having booked accommodation in Vienna, we were going to have to stay the night at Heathrow, but in the end we are going to get there.”

Ms Spires added: “Thankfully we bought our tickets online, which meant we were automatically booked on the later flight when the original one was cancelled.”

The problems over the last few days are estimated to have cost BA up to £16m (€20m).

But the airline had high hopes ahead of today after operations on Friday were said to have gone “very well.”

The lower frequency weekend schedule was supposed to give the airport operators some leeway in preparing to run a full weekday service for the first time from Monday.

One passenger, who asked not to be named, said he travelled from the Midlands today to catch a 2.45pm flight to Basle, Switzerland, only to be told that, owing to today’s glitch, he would have to catch another flight leaving after 7pm.

“It’s frustrating. I just wish we could have had this information earlier because I could then have flown from City Airport,” he said.

“I thought things were meant to be getting better at Terminal 5. It really has been a PR disaster, promising so much but, so far, delivering very little.”