Passengers left in limbo as airport’s systems fail
TRAVELLING isn’t easy but coming home on a delayed flight to discover the airport have a problem with their baggage retrieval system doesn’t help already frayed nerves.
Then there’s the queue you stand in for 15 minutes as you struggle through passport control watching fellow passengers told they’re not pressing down hard enough on the right page of their passport for the machines to read the details, or that you have the wrong passport to be in that queue in the first place.
Then none of the screens in the baggage retrieval hall are working and at least one of the belts has stopped while the others carry a selection of luggage from who knows where in an eternal loop while passengers run from belt to belt trying to read tags on random luggage to see if they can recognise flight details.
To make matters worse, there are no staff around to help explain why the hundreds of passengers milling around have no idea which belt will give them back their suitcases, golf clubs and skis.
That’s what happened to me, and thousands of tourists, at Edinburgh Airport a couple of weeks ago.
Things will go wrong from time to time – we need to expect that and be ready for it – but we shouldn’t expect chaos.
There should be a plan in place to ensure that when something like this happens, staff are available to help, make sure passengers know what’s going on and how long it’s going to be before the problems are resolved.
Organisations are judged not by whether things go wrong on their watch but by how they react when things do. By that measure, Edinburgh Airport failed in their duty to passengers.
An Edinburgh Airport spokesman said: “With more than 45,000 passengers coming through the airport every day, the passenger experience is of the upmost importance and we place great emphasis on that. However, like all companies and businesses, there will be a small number of instances when the high standards we normally deliver aren’t met.
“We apologise for any inconvenience caused but it’s important to stress this was one incident which took place over a small time frame in the course of one full day.”