BA cancels flights at Heathrow; seeks help with misplaced luggage
Tariq Panja, AP, USA TODAY, 4/2/2008
LONDON — British Airways canceled more flights on [April 2] from its problem-plagued new terminal at Heathrow Airport, and sought help from Milan, Italy, in returning misplaced luggage to customers.
"We want to get bags quicker to customers and if it's quicker to send them to Milan or by Fed Ex we will use it," a British Airways spokeswoman said on condition of anonymity in keeping with company policy.
She said 10% of the mountains of misplaced bags destined for European cities were being sent to a processing center in Milan to be sorted and returned to their owners, while some for domestic destinations were sent to other airports across Britain.
Others were being handled at Heathrow.
Problems became immediately evident when BA opened its gleaming new Terminal 5 last week.
Day after day, flights were canceled or severely delayed. Angry passengers were left to camp at the airport overnight. When flights did take off, passengers often were forced to leave their baggage behind because of problems with check-in equipment.
The spokeswoman said 50 flights were canceled on [April 2] and 34 would be on [April 3].
She was unable to say when passengers would be reunited with their luggage, predicting only that it would be "over the next few weeks."
Aviation Minister Jim Fitzpatrick had told lawmakers on [March 31] that it could take up to a week for that to happen.