Nightmare: Plane Flew Without Any of Its PAX’s Checked Bags

1.1K

People always complain about when their checked bags are delayed, and that’s with good reason. When you get off your flight, you want to get your bags and be on your way, not wait around for however long until your bags finally make it to the carousel.

Of course, airports and airlines realize this. It’s undoubtedly part of the reason why Delta Air Lines and Alaska Airlines have their respective perks of gifting you a certain number of frequent flyer miles if your bag takes longer than 20 minutes to get to the carousel. Of course, they do have their sneaky ways to get out of this guarantee. But on the other side of the coin, there’s the woman who used this guarantee to her advantage.

And THEN there was the airport that had logged so many complaints about how long it took for luggage to get to the carousel that they quietly manipulated the system to be in their favor and boom, no more complaints.

But we just read a story that, I think, beats them all – a plane that departed with a cabin full of passengers, but none of their checked bags.

According to AFP, a Swiss International Air Lines flight going from Zürich, Switzerland to Bilbao, Spain said it had no choice but to leave the gate without loading any of its passengers’ luggage. The Swiss flag carrier claimed the incident happened because there wasn’t enough ground staff.

The flight in question happened a little more than a week ago. It was originally delayed by over an hour because the flight crew had to wait for the ground crew to arrive. But the flight eventually couldn’t wait any longer. It had to leave for Spain because of operational reasons; the plane was going to have to complete a return flight from Bilbao before the airport in Zürich closed for the night. So, with no ground crew in sight, it eventually left without any of its passengers’ checked bags.

Flightradar24.com data confirmed that the flight, on SWISS’s partner, Edelweiss Air, was WK226. The Airbus A220-100, had a scheduled departure from Zürich Airport at 5:10pm local time. But due to the delays, it didn’t leave until 6:42pm.

Meanwhile, the 111 passengers on the flight had no idea their bags were still in Zürich until they arrived in Spain. The pilot apparently apologized for the delay and had even said something about “a lack of qualified personnel” but never specifically said their checked bags had never been loaded onto the plane.

Once the plane landed in Bilbao, the Swiss passengers sat around baggage claim for 2 hours, waiting for their bags. Finally, staff from Iberia Airlines broke the news to them that their bags had all been left behind in Switzerland.

And why was it Iberia staff who informed the passengers about this horrific news? Because there was no staff from Swiss International Air Lines in Bilbao to tell them.

Kavin Ampalam, a spokesperson from Swiss International Air Lines, was quoted as saying, “We understand the situation is not favorable for the people involved, and of course we regret the inconvenience,”

“I just find it arrogant to knowingly ruin people’s holidays like that. Because it has to be done knowingly,” one of the passengers affected told Blick.

The airline also said it’s investigating what exactly led to the incident and how they can improve it.

Simple Flying wrote an update to the story on Monday, September 11th:

In a statement to Simple Flying, SWISS spokesperson Kavin Ampalam provided an update on the situation.

“It was possible to deliver most of the baggage to Bilbao yesterday, Sunday. The last pieces of baggage will be transported to Bilbao this evening. We deeply understand the frustration and anger of the passengers, especially because many of them were traveling on vacation. For SWISS, the situation is anything but satisfactory. That’s why we are currently reviewing our processes to prevent such cases from happening again. We are also in close contact with the company responsible for loading the aircraft and handling the baggage.”

“This shouldn’t happen,” said Ampalam.

I should say not!

Feature Photo: Public domain

Want to comment on this post? Great! Read this first to help ensure it gets approved.

Want to sponsor a post, write something for Your Mileage May Vary, or put ads on our site? Click here for more info.

Like this post? Please share it! We have plenty more just like it and would love it if you decided to hang around and sign up to get emailed notifications of when we post.

Whether you’ve read our articles before or this is the first time you’re stopping by, we’re really glad you’re here and hope you come back to visit again!

This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary