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Travel | The Independent UK - The plane truth: The secret life of ...

by estherwalker

But what happens to your luggage next? Every year, tens of millions of air passengers willingly entrust their luggage to a tangled system of conveyor belts, sharp corners, wet floors, clumsy hands and trucks, without a clue what goes on behind the scenes, relying on blind faith that they will see their valuables again.

For the past week, the cancellation of 430 flights from Heathrow's new Terminal 5, and faults with the terminal's automated baggage-handling system have spelt disaster for travellers ? and created a mammoth backlog of lost luggage. As the biggest airline public-relations disaster in living memory lurched from one surreal revelation to the next, it emerged yesterday that British Airways had been reduced to sending 20,000 cases by road to Milan, to be processed at a sorting facility and then, with any luck, reunited with their owners.

It may sound like a crazy plan but it makes sense to the airline. There is no glory in losing passengers' luggage. If a bag is mislaid on a short-haul flight, it can cost the airline more to find and return it than the fare the passenger paid in the first place. Back in the summer of 2007, BA got into the habit of sending luggage-only jumbos to the US in an effort to return passengers' belongings.

Although it takes 24 hours to transport luggage from Heathrow to Milan before being returned, bizarrely it's quicker than sending the bags all the way by air, due to the screening procedures, which are extra-tough when luggage is flying without an owner. Terminal 5, despite having the most hi-tech baggage-handling system available, still doesn't have the wherewithal to process delayed bags on site.

If nothing else, the T5 debacle has highlighted the surprisingly tricky business of getting air passengers' bags from A to B. You are never more likely than now to be separated, for longer than you'd like, from your bags while flying ? and insurance claims on lost luggage are at a record high.

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