Senior managers at British Airways were warned as recently as two weeks ago
that their plans for a “big bang” move to Terminal 5 would result in chaos
and cancelled flights.
The Unite and GMB unions both told BA that its 2,000 baggage staff had not
been properly trained to use the automated baggage-handling system. They
recommended that the airline should stagger the transfer of flights from
terminals 1 and 4 over several weeks rather than moving 380 flights — 70 per
cent of the airline’s daily total — in one day. BA claimed to have been
training staff and carrying out trials for six months but baggage handlers
said they had received only a cursory introduction. One said: “The
familiarisation was just a walk-through the terminal and a lecture on what a
wonderful building it was.”
The problems started when staff were unable to get into car parks and there
were too few buses to take them to the terminal. There were also long delays
because only one security arch for staff was open.
The baggage system is designed to handle 12,000 bags an hour but shuts off
automatically when it is full. Bags were arriving at dozens of loading
points but there were not enough staff in the right places to remove them
The biggest problems were caused by the failure of the automated
work-allocation system, which is meant to give staff instructions via
handheld computers about where they should go to load and unload bags. The
system sent staff to the wrong places and many were unable to find the
correct loading bays via the maze of corridors.
One union official said: “BA have tried to save money by getting computers
rather than human beings to allocate work. The trouble is, when things began
to go wrong there was no one for staff to talk to so they could make a
sensible decision. The baggage handlers were just left waiting for
instructions on their handheld computers.”
BA and BAA, the Spanish company that operates the airport, held a press
conference two weeks ago at which they insisted that the baggage system had
back-up systems that could cope with any problems.
Mike Forster, BAA’s strategy director, said then: “We have a world-class
baggage system that is going to work perfectly on day one.”
The baggage tag-scanning system was also faulty, directing bags to the wrong
destinations. Vanderlande Industries, which has helped to design and supply
the baggage system, would make no comment. Alstec, the company operating the
bag-handling systems, also declined to comment. The Conservatives said that
the fiasco called into question the Government’s plan for a sixth terminal
and a third runway.
David Frost, director-general of the British Chambers of Commerce, said: “The
shambles is yet another depressing chapter for the UK’s crumbling transport
system and sends a depressing message to businesses around the world.”
