Originally Posted by
Crosswind Limits
Just returned from abroad having used the services of T2 LHR. Arrived for outbound flight in the early hours of 15 December to find utter chaos in the terminal. Pax almost queueing out the doors. Weird snake like queues in multiple directions. Numerous pax becoming irate amid concerns they might miss flights. There was some form of system where staff were announcing imminent departures and relevant pax were pulled from queues. When my turn came was sent to front of queue to use self service baggage tagging. Bag eventually checked in, picked up boarding pass and whisked through security via fast track lanes. Arrived at gate as flight was boarding. Fast forward 12 hours and discover my checked in luggage had not made it my final destination! Luggage finally arrived a full week later as for some unknown reason it was not loaded onto my flight and only actually left LHR 3-4 days later. Utter shambles!
We landed at LHR-T2 on the evening of 20 December. There were (very rough estimate) about 2,000 suitcases tagged for departures from Heathrow on 19 December right there - either left on trolleys or on the floor of the baggage relcaim hall around the belts. Most that I saw were tagged for Lufthansa and other Star Alliance flights, some going as far as Singapore, Tokyo, Perth and Auckland. Many of their owners would have still been in the air when I found them. I did a quick pass with my iPhone and the Find my iPhone app to try and ping as many Airtags as possible - hopefully that would have given some passengers more useful information about where their bags were.
We were lucky on our return flight from T2 a week later, but it seems that at a number of critical moments over the holidays there simply haven't been enough baggage handling staff to get bags onto flights.