Backlog Britain... airport’s ‘carpet of luggage’
Travellers waiting days for their bags after ‘IT glitch’
PASSENGERS are waiting for r days to be reunited with their r luggage as airports continue to be swamped in increasing chaos.
Hundreds of bags were spotted in a huge pile at Heathrow’s Terminal l 2 on Friday.
Bosses at the airport said a ‘technical l glitch’ had caused the backlog, which h was described by onlookers as resembling - a ‘carpet of luggage’.
Passengers were reportedly warned it t could take two days before their belongings - were returned to them.
Chaos is widespread across the UK, , with a captain seen putting bags on an n Edelweiss flight at Edinburgh airport t yesterday as airlines fail to cope with h ongoing staff shortages.
It is not the first time a pilot has been n forced to help ground crew – a copilot was spotted loading luggage on to a 32-hour delayed flight at Manchester airport last month.
And it emerged yesterday that British Airways, easyJet and Tui are bypassing post-Brexit immigration rules to hire EU crews who don’t have UK work visas.
In an employment loophole, the airlines are flying EU-registered planes from a range of firms, including Finnair, Iberia and Latvia’s SmartLynx.
They are acting under ‘wet leasing’, which is defined under EU regulations as an agreement between air carriers where the plane is operated under the party from which it is leased.
The airlines said it is a common practice in the industry. It is not suggested that it breaks any of the UK’s immigration laws.
The industry wants the Government to consider offering temporary visas akin to those issued to fruit pickers and musicians.
But Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said earlier this month: ‘The answer can’t always be to reach for the lever marked “more immigration”.’ It is understood that bosses have warned the Department for Transport that the number of overseas-flagged aircraft used will increase if ministers do not relax immigration laws to allow firms to employ foreign workers.
As well as luggage disruption, huge queues continued to form at terminals across the country yesterday. Labour frontbencher David Lammy, who was at Stansted yesterday, wrote on Twitter: ‘Another morning, another horrid queue at airport security.’
Heathrow yesterday said it was ‘working round the clock with airlines to reunite passengers with their bags as quickly as possible’.