The baggage handling system at Heathrow airport’s new Terminal 5 launched in spectacular failure this weekend, with 15,000 items of luggage reported lost. Hundreds of flights have been cancelled as a result, and many passengers have been stranded overnight.

The system had been described by its operators British Airways and BAA as “one of the hardest-working IT systems in the world”. But on the first day of production, it appeared that the system buckled under the weight of its own complexity.

Early reports suggested that a software glitch had caused the baggage backlog, but the blame has since moved to the lack of familiarity with the system among baggage handling staff.

"During the inadequate training days prior to the opening, any staff questions were bounced back with 'I don't know' and 'it will be clear on the day’,” one baggage handler working at Terminal 5 told the BBC.

Before its ignominious debut, BA and BAA had proudly paraded the IT infrastructure at Terminal 5 to the press. According to specifications, the baggage handling system is capable of tracking 12,000 bar-coded items of luggage an hour. In practice, the system began to lose track of luggage just hours after the first item was checked in.

Further reading

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