On Tuesday morning at about 03:15 we had a major baggage sorter failure, effectively reducing capacity by 50%. Restrictions were put in Check-in to slow the flow and we went into contingency which put all the baggage through 1 sorter as opposed to 2. I left at 04:45 and warned that it it wouldn't be long before the remaining sorter was overwhelmed. Went home, had a couple of beers, went to bed.
Woke up at 13:30 and checked the status...sorter still not fixed, Twitter rants from passengers who had landed at their destination sans baggage. Arrived back at work at 16:00 to a scene of utter luggage carnage. Unsorted bags everywhere. They had tried to divert some through another route - that failed. Then another route. That failed. The big boss came over and told me that tonight I was to focus on getting as many of these bags on the next available flight and let someone else focus on the aircraft cleaning. Fine by me
"How many bags have missed?" I asked. "Over 3,000" came the reply.
"How many have we sent so far?" I enquired. "Not sure, quite a few" And off he toddled...home...
They had arranged for Gatwick staff to help clearing them but the process to "Rush" bags is not straightforward. Thus, as I surveyed the headless-chickenism before me it transpired that they had only managed to repatriate 120 or so - the rest had been refused as the paperwork was wrong. I told them to stop the paperwork side of things and purely manually sort the bags into destination airport. I arranged for a couple of our lads to start bringing all the unsorted bags to an area outside where we could create piles for each destination. This they did for the next hour and a half until they all pissed off home
By this time, my Duty Manager had arrived. I briefed him and we took another chap with us. When they saw the piles of bags, they went slightly pale
and we started clearing them. As the night wore on, we realised that we were running out of baggage carts and would struggle to have sufficient for Wednesday morning's flights. As the broken sorter had now been fixed, we need at least 150 carts for them, we had already used over 50. Phone calls were made...and we started using other ground handler's kit. If it wasn't nailed down, we took it
By 03:30 the three of us were shattered and could do no more, leaving 10 carts ~ 500ish bags still to do.
So between the 3 of us, we managed to clear about 2,500 in 8 hours. This caused knock-on delays in the morning, as all the bags we did had to be checked by the dispatchers prior to being loaded
and new weight and balance/trim sheets required.
There was one nice part though - I had a call asking for 3 bags to be returned to the passengers who had missed their flight and were re-booked on the next one. They had been provided with hotel accommodation at the airport overnight but needed the bags as they had a baby and the mother had medication she needed. I told them the chance of finding 3 bags in a pile of 3,000 was remote to say the least. One of the pieces was a car seat and I wasn't going to even try to find any of their bags but as I was walking outside, a car seat in a bright orange carry bag caught my eye. Lo and behold, it was the one! And right next to it were the other 2 cases
. So I grabbed all 3 and went off to Customer Services where the family was waiting, not expecting to get them. The mother (I would
) started crying and gave me a big kiss. Assume the medication she needed was for her bad eyesight...
Went home at 04:45, a couple of beers, then bed. Got up at 12:30, went for a few Guinness, home, dinner, back to bed at 1800. Woke up at 05:30 this morning, aching all over. I'm off now for a few days, so Guinnessathon begins
