No quick fix for baggage woes as airlines bring in volunteer staff
The Christmas travel peak has compounded problems with lost and unclaimed luggage at Auckland Airport as a ‘‘perfect storm’’ hits the aviation sector.
While some travellers are wondering if they’ll ever see their bags again, airline industry representatives say there is no quick fix to the lost luggage problem.
Based in Seattle, Andrew Burgess flew home for Christmas, to show his children around New Zealand and attend a wedding before flying out on January 7. Burgess thinks he will never again see the bag containing his suit for the wedding.
After snowstorms halted flights at Vancouver airport last week, including the family’s Air New Zealand flight, the Burgesses flew into Auckland on an Air Canada flight on December 22.
Thanks to an early Christmas present of AirTags, Burgess knew their bags weren’t with them as soon as they arrived: ‘‘About three days later one of our three bags showed up in Manila, Philippines, and is still there,’’ Burgess said. That bag has Christmas presents and Burgess’s suit.
The other two bags arrived in Auckland on December 26.
‘‘Once we saw them arrive at Auckland we thought it was a 24-hour problem,’’ Burgess said. But the AirTags show the bags haven’t moved in days.
The family buy what they need day by day. Speaking with Air NZ
hasn’t inspired hope. ‘‘They didn’t know where our bags were. Us telling them where our bags were was more than they knew. And it didn’t sound like any action was going to be taken.’’
Burgess, who runs supply chain architecture for Amazon, spends his days watching packages go around the world. As a customer, he sees a lot lacking in the baggage handling system at Auckland Airport.
Cath O’Brien, executive director of Barnz, the aviation sector’s industry body, said a ‘‘perfect storm’’ of staff shortages, international travel disruptions presenting opportunities for bags to go astray at every transit point, and the post-Covid rebuild of the aviation sector have converged to compound Auckland Airport’s baggage problem.
‘‘We have got short memories . . . It was only the middle of this year that the border was not fully open. Airlines and ground handlers have had to do significant rehiring which is ongoing.
‘‘We knew the restart would be complex. It was great that the border reopened, but it was very quick.’’
Three companies do ground handling at Auckland Airport –
Swissport, Menzies Aviation and Air NZ. On top of baggage handling, ground handlers help plane park, load and unload cargo, clean the planes, organise refuelling and supply catering.
‘‘All ground handlers have really struggled with staffing,’’ O’Brien said, ‘‘with more work to do than there are people to do it.’’
While international travel was curtailed, Menzies downscaled and then had to rapidly upscale when the border re-opened, she said. Barnz members have a 30% staff vacancy rate with a further 5% of staff absent with Covid.
Although baggage handling companies have lifted pay rates, she said filling vacancies isn’t easy: ‘‘Because the labour market is so tight, conditions are good for workers, so workers are able to find work that suits them, is easy to get to and pays well.’’
Airport work can be tricky, require night shifts and there’s limited public transport available, she said, adding that some buses to the airport would help.
O’Brien thinks New Zealand will be working its way through the labour challenge for at least 12 months. On top of labour issues, she said fewer planes were flying to New Zealand than prepandemic and they are ‘‘extremely full’’, bringing a high volume of baggage.
Biosecurity requirements add another layer of complexity.
‘‘If the customer has filled in a form before they left the airport, that makes the biosecurity screening easier. If the bag has come in without the customer, you can’t question the customer and that baggage without a form has to be hand searched for items like muddy boots.’’
Auckland Airport has additional space to store the backlog of baggage as it moves through the process, she said. However, an Auckland Airport staffer, speaking anonymously, told the Sunday Star-Times that recent leaked footage didn’t capture the full extent of the lost baggage crisis, which was ‘‘much worse’’ than most people realised.
Air NZ chief operating officer Alex Marren said the scale of mishandled baggage was a significant global issue and echoed O’Brien’s opinion that it’s not going away any time soon. ‘‘It has been made more difficult with complex international connections into New Zealand, severe weather in North America, busy airports and Covid.’’
Marren said the airline was taking immediate action, including bringing on dozens of volunteers from across the business to work on baggage. Those with baggagetracking experience are working in the system and helping customers directly, others are finding bags, taking them to and from the border clearance process, and sorting and scanning.
Air NZ is also rolling out new technology to log and locate mishandled bags and has sought approval from the Civil Aviation Authority for Apple’s AirTags.
It is working with border agencies, airport companies, other airlines and ground handlers on a system-wide solution, Marren said.
‘‘Finding a solution is a priority for us. It’s a tall order to ask customers waiting for their bags to be more patient than they already are, but we’re doing all we can to solve this.’’
A Qantas spokesperson said the airline has also rostered on additional staff from across the business to work with the airport and its ground handler to get bags to customers as fast as possible.
The spokesperson said where a customer’s bag was delayed, and they were away from home, Qantas would reimburse them for reasonable expenses.