November 5, 2024

Alex o'Loughlin

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1,000 bags. Zero passengers. Delta flight from Heathrow latest sign of air travel hell

A staffing lack that has caused a provider meltdown at Heathrow in modern months has now been dubbed “airmageddon.” Airport authorities have responded to the canceled flights and huge dropped baggage issues by telling airlines they need to cap the variety of travellers at one particular of the world’s busiest airports to 100,000 a working day.

So Delta figured out a way to get the lost luggage out of the airport, even however it could not consider more travellers.

Suitcases are seen uncollected at Heathrow's Terminal Three bagage reclaim on July 8. Delta recently flew a flight from London with no passengers and 1,000 bags to try to solve the backlog of lost luggage affecting its customers.

“Delta groups worked a innovative alternative to go delayed checked luggage from London-Heathrow on July 11 after a frequently scheduled flight had to be canceled specified airport passenger volume limits at Heathrow,” claimed a assertion from the airline. “Delta flight 9888 from Heathrow to Delta’s Detroit hub flew 1,000 baggage back to the United States, where by groups then forwarded the bags on to our customers.”

The passenger-free of charge flight was to start with reported by the New York Situations.
Delta and other US airlines have been hit with their have staffing shortages and support complications so considerably this summertime journey time, resulting in just about 30,000 flights to, from or in the United States to be canceled, in accordance to tracking support FlightAware. The disruptions have been notably negative above getaway weekends this kind of as Memorial Working day, the Father’s Day/Juneteenth weekend and the July 4th holiday getaway.
Delta (DAL) described earnings Wednesday that ended up sharply reduced than forecast owing in part to higher gas charges but also drastically attributed to the cost of working with all those provider difficulties.
Traveling reaches peak suck just as everyone is trying to get out of town

Although Delta did not crack out the unique prices of the provider difficulties, it did say it will spend an further $200 million this yr in extra time and high quality pay back to lessen the quantity of flight cancellations. And that isn’t going to count other charges affiliated with service disruptions — these types of as flying jets whole of bags overseas without the need of any shelling out clients.

“I want to thank our clients for their patience and knowledge as we restore the trustworthiness that you’ve appear to assume from Delta,” Delta CEO Ed Bastian claimed in the course of a get in touch with with traders Wednesday.

CNN’s Chris Boyette contributed to this report.