Software glitches and poor training contributed to the disastrous events following the opening of Heathrow Airport’s Terminal 5 earlier this year, in which 30,000 items of luggage were lost in just a few days, a government inquiry has heard.

However, the precise cause of the baggage handling system’s collapse is still subject to continued discussion as airline BA and airport infrastructure builder BAA debate which party was at fault.

BA CEO Willie Walsh admitted to a Commons Transport Committee that the company was responsible for the inadequate training that staff received before having to use the system. He added, however, that delays in completion of the building limited the time in which it had to provide training.

"We compromised on the testing regime and this impacted on operations, but this was because of delays in the completion of the building programme," he said.

But BAA CEO Colin Matthews said that the trouble began with technical failures at a software level. "There were then a number of problems that arose very specifically from within the software,” he told the committee.

The baggage handling system at Terminal 5 was supposed to be one of the most sophisticated IT systems ever deployed, with the capacity to track many thousands of items of luggage simultaneously. In the event, however, the systems quickly unravelled, leaving hundreds of passengers stranded and costing BA an estimated £50 million.

Further reading Terminal IT management Does the staggering IT failure at Heathrow's Terminal 5 prove big bang projects never work?

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