Travellers at the UK’s busiest airport, Heathrow, were left in a frenzy spotting a deluge of luggage abandoned at a terminal. Photos and videos of suitcases and bags piled up at the terminal took over the internet, with netizens taking to social media to complain about the sorry state of affairs.
Hundreds of bags were seen lined up at Terminal 2 of the British airport without any baggage staff as passengers waited for hours for luggage owing to a technical glitch. Some passengers had to fly without their bags, while others faced delays at check-in, the airport said, according to BBC News.
As UK airports saw an influx of travellers owing to the platinum jubilee celebrations of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, chaos ensued at the terminal where many said they had to wait for more than two hours at the baggage reclaim area, with no clue where their bags were.
Deborah Haynes, defence and security editor for Sky News, witnessed the “enormous luggage carpet” after arriving at the airport from Brussels and said, “at least it came on the same flight and is leaving with me…”
Suddenly a slight wait for my luggage to arrive at @HeathrowAirport is even more of an irrelevance – at least it came on the same flight and is leaving with me… pic.twitter.com/h42BfCe0mo
— Deborah Haynes (@haynesdeborah) June 17, 2022
A photo of the Epic Suitcase Challenge @HeathrowAirport Terminal 2 pic.twitter.com/2N2hDFYv84
— Deborah Haynes (@haynesdeborah) June 17, 2022
“There were clusters of suitcases without owners grouped around various conveyor belts. I wondered where the owners were,” she was quoted by Sky News. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” she added.
Lost luggage has a final resting place perhaps….@HeathrowAirport T2…mine’s the black one (I think) pic.twitter.com/u0tDMTgFHj
— Stuart Dempster (@StuDempster) June 17, 2022
“Officials looked to be trying to arrange the suitcases next to poles with letters from the alphabet stuck on them – maybe it was to correspond with the name of the owner of each bag,” she explained, adding it looked like an “epic task”.
Utter bedlam at Heathrow this evening. Our country’s two major airports now reduced to pandemonium pic.twitter.com/TkyJW2Z0tM
— Dominic Waghorn (@DominicWaghorn) June 17, 2022
As anger continued on social media, many slammed airport authorities for being underprepared. Later, however, the technical problem was resolved and the authorities apologised for the trouble. In a statement, the airport said: “Passengers are now able to check-in as normal, but a number of passengers who departed from Terminal 2 earlier today may have travelled without their luggage,” Evening Standard reported.
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Premium“We are working closely with airlines to reunite passengers with their luggage as soon as possible. We’re sorry there has been a disruption to passenger journeys,” a spokesperson for Heathrow was quoted.
