Thousands of passengers were forced to fly abroad without their belongings yesterday when the baggage system at Heathrow's Terminal Four broke down.
There were angry scenes after travellers on scores of flights - mostly with British Airways - were told to fly without their bags or not at all.
The problems began when a routine software update was loaded on to Terminal Four's computers yesterday morning.
Baggage chaos: The scene on the runway at Heathrow in 2006
Initially the program ran smoothly, but it crashed at lunchtime when the baggage load dramatically increased.
The whole system had to be emptied of luggage while a previous version of the software was reloaded.
By last night the problem had still not been fully rectified and the terminal is bracing itself for more problems this morning.
British Airways is advising travellers using the terminal to bring only hand luggage if at all possible.
A spokesman for BA said 2,000 of its passengers had been affected.
Company director Graham Robinson, 54, and his wife Margaret, 53, were among those caught in the meltdown. They were forced to stay in a hotel overnight after they were told that they could not bring their bags on a 17-day holiday to India.
The couple, from Uckfield in East Sussex, stood in a queue which spilled out of the terminal building.
Mr Robinson said: "The airport staff didn't seem to know what was going on when we arrived. Tempers were getting really rather frayed.
"The inside of the terminal was absolutely crammed full of people because after the system broke they were loading all the baggage manually, which caused a huge backlog."
Airport owner BAA said those who had chosen to fly would have their luggage sent to their destination when the system was fixed.
But a spokesman declined to say how many flights and how many passengers had been affected.
He added: "At lunchtime the entire baggage system crashed, affecting primarily BA customers at Terminal Four, as they are the biggest carrier there. Customers were then given the choice - to fly without their luggage or wait."
The chaos came as it was revealed that more than 6.2million bags were delayed or lost by European airlines last year - a rise of 6 per cent on 2006.
British Airways was the worst performing major European airline, according to the study by the Air Transport Users Council.
It lost - either temporarily or permanently - 26.5 items per 1,000 travellers last year.
Assuming each of its 43million passengers carried one bag, that means the airline lost 1.14million items altogether.
Source: Daily Mail UK Feb. 20, 2008
BA passengers hit by baggage system meltdown as thousands unable to take luggage on holiday 
Linear Mode
