Broadcaster Lloyd Burr has warned Kiwis heading overseas to “be prepared” for travel chaos, after he endured a three-hour wait for his baggage at London’s Heathrow Airport.
The Today FM host had travelled from Auckland to London via Los Angeles, arriving on Sunday local time – just as Heathrow was grappling with “technical issues” that led to a sea of suitcases sprawled across the floor of one of the world’s busiest airports.
Burr said he initially thought the issue was just with his Virgin Atlantic flight, but soon realised passengers from other flights that had arrived into Terminal 3 had also been affected by the hold-up.
No explanation was offered as the hours ticked by, adding to what had already been a 30-hour journey for Burr.
READ MORE:
* Why is food so expensive at airports?
* A tale of two flights: What it’s like to fly to the UK right now
* ‘I’ll be home before my luggage’: Qantas passengers’ fury after being left in Britain without bags
“All these people were in this one area where there’s hardly any toilets, a single vending machine that didn’t work – you couldn’t get any food so you’re just lying there, everyone’s exhausted, and there was no communication,” Burr said.
“From a people-watching point of view, it was quite entertaining. But it got to the point where it was like, ‘it’s been two hours now, where are my bags’.”
Burr said an announcement was eventually made to say the bags would be unloaded in 15 minutes’ time. But the process was prolonged even more painfully by the bags arriving in “waves”.
“You’d get some people from the plane cheering, but then it would just be one carton or something.”
During the ordeal, Burr tagged Virgin Atlantic in a post on Twitter, trying to find out what had happened. The airline responded apologising for the delay, and blaming the issue on “system failures” at Heathrow.
Burr suspected the main problem was to do with staffing.
“They wound down their operations really quickly during the pandemic, and now that flights are 100% full again, they’ve had to go from zero to hero and they just don’t have the staff.”
Burr, who returned to New Zealand last year after three years in London as Newshub’s Europe correspondent, said the whole experience had been a “shock to the system”, with both legs of his flight “jam-packed” and short-staffed.
“The travel I’ve done during the pandemic, the planes have been empty, and it’s been rather enjoyable. To go from that to this… it was a bit of a shock,” he said.
“I hate to be one of those whingers, but as Kiwis start to travel they’ll realise it’s probably like that in lots of places around the world at the moment… Kiwis should be prepared for it.”
Baggage at Heathrow Airport started to pile up on Friday, with Sky News defence and security editor Deborah Haynes describing an “enormous luggage carpet” outside Terminal 2.
A Heathrow spokesperson told Sky News on Friday there had been a “technical issue” with the Terminal 2 baggage system, which had been resolved.
However, the chaos continued into the weekend, with travellers sharing photos of the mountains of baggage to social media, and arrivals reporting hours-long waits to retrieve their baggage in both Terminals 2 and 3.
Responding to reports of Sunday’s baggage reclaim issues, Heathrow initially blamed the airlines, saying any baggage arriving into the airport was the airline’s responsibility.
“It is airlines who transport your baggage from the plane to the baggage reclaim area, as they either employ their own ground staff, or outsource this process to a third party company,” a spokesperson said.
"This issue is isolated and is unrelated to the technical baggage issues in T2 on Friday.”
But on Monday, the airport asked airlines using the two terminals to cut back 10% of their flights, to give them a chance to get on top of the backlog.
This resulted in the cancellation of around 30 flights carrying up to 5000 passengers, BBC News reported.
“We apologise unreservedly for the disruption passengers have faced over the course of this weekend,” a Heathrow spokesperson said.
© 2022 Stuff Limited