East Midlands Airport (EMA) passengers were left stranded abroad without their luggage after failures occurred in the airport’s baggage handling system.
17 flights, that should have been carrying around 1,600 suitcases, departed the UK airport on Sunday 15 September leaving some passengers without their belongings for several days.
After being made aware of the fault in its baggage belt systems, EMA took the decision to allow flights to depart and arrangements to be made for baggage to follow on, which the airport stated is “normal procedure in circumstances like this”.
Describing the experience as an “utter nightmare”, one passenger and her family were left waiting 52 hours before being reunited with their luggage.
Abby* and her family were flying on holiday to Girona in Spain when the incident occurred.
She said: “We arrived at East Midlands Airport at 4:30am. Suitcases were literally dumped everywhere with only two people loading three airlines’ worth of baggage onto cages.
“We asked if our luggage would even make it to the aircraft and were told, ‘We hope so’.
“Then we were rushed onto the aircraft when the gate opened, hand luggage wasn’t even measured, my Mum asked if our suitcases were on the plane and the person at the gate said he didn’t know.”
When Abby turned her phone on upon landing in Spain, she received a text from Ryanair telling her that “several suitcases” had not been loaded onto the flight, only to find out after waiting at baggage reclaim for 45 minutes that no one’s cases had been loaded on at EMA.
Airline representatives at Girona then told passengers to “sit and wait” and that “hopefully we’ll get our suitcases this week”.
Abby added: “No-one is claiming any responsibility whatsoever for this. It’s a f***ing joke. I won’t be flying from EMA again.”
Simon Hinchley, director of operations at East Midlands Airport, told ARGS: ““In the early hours of 15 September we became aware of a fault with one of two baggage belt systems, with the second acting as a contingency in situations like this.
“Unfortunately, the second also developed a fault which is a very rare occurrence. We had engineers on site attempting to fix the whole system, with a view to baggage rejoining flights that had been delayed.
“Ultimately, the decision was taken to allow flights to depart and arrangements made for baggage to follow on, which is normal procedure in circumstances like this. This affected 17 departing flights.”
He added that, while a “rare incident”, EMA apologises for any inconvenience and that the airport will be “reviewing our response to learn any lessons”.
