BA flights canceled at Heathrow, airline seeks help with misplaced luggage

LONDON – British Airways canceled more flights at its new terminal at Heathrow Airport on Wednesday and sought help from Milan, Italy, in returning misplaced luggage to its customers.

«We want to get bags quicker to customers and if it’s quicker to send them to Milan or by Fed Ex we will use it,» a British Airways spokeswoman said on condition of anonymity in keeping with company policy.

She said 10 percent of the mountains of misplaced bags destined for European cities was being sent to a processing center in Milan to be sorted and returned to their owners, while some for domestic destinations were sent to other airports across Britain.

Others were being handled at Heathrow.

The spokeswoman said 50 flights were canceled on Wednesday and 34 would be on Thursday.

She was unable to say when passengers would be reunited with their luggage, predicting only that it would be «over the next few weeks.
Aviation Minister Jim Fitzpatrick had told lawmakers on Monday that it could take up to a week for that to happen.

Problems emerged immediately when BA opened its gleaming new Terminal 5 last week.

Crowds of angry passengers saw flights canceled or severely delayed, leaving many to camp at the airport overnight. When flights did take off, passengers often were forced to leave their baggage behind because of problems with check-in equipment.

pr-inside.com