I was a victim of the opening day at T5 !
They lost my luggage and I had to spend six days working in Istanbul with practically nothing.
Do BA care ?
Here's the story:
I travelled from Terminal 5 on Thursday 27th March(opening day)
From the moment I arrived at the terminal it was chaos. I checked my bag at around 13:15 for my flight to Istanbul at 16:00 and was given no indication of any problems.
After passing through security where no one appeared to know if they should be using the finger print and camera equipment.
I found the design of the terminal from a passenger point of view to be terrible. Unless you are in a food franchise or a shop there is hardly any room to sit and a lack of flight boards in sensible places. The toilet facilities are tiny.
After getting some food and drink we arrived at the gate (nowhere to sit)in good time and found more chaos. Our plane was at the gate but the passengers from the previous flight were unable to get off due to the guidance system being broken and no steps for the passengers to deplane.
I overheard the BA staff say that the passengers hads been stuck on the plane for over an hour. We were told to come back to the gate at for a departure at 17:00.
The staff were having to refer to instruction manuals to use the gate equipment etc, apparently due training being too early prior to occupation of the terminal.
The sames issues were happening to other flights, this resulted in hundreds of people queuing at the BA customer service desk, BA staff all around the terminal had no information to provide to passengers.
We returned to the gate to board our flight and were still left waiting for some time.
Once we passed through the gate(escalators and lifts not working) with the staff still unsure how to work the equipment and also trying to accommodate wheelchair and disabled passengers with the all the facilities problems.
As we boarded we were assured that our luggage waqs on the flight by the gate staff despite n ot seeing it actually being loaded.
The flight left the gate considerably late and joined the usual Heathrow traffic jam prior to take off. Whilst we were waiting to take off the Captain also confirmed that the baggage was indeed loaded.
Upon arrival at Istanbul it was found that no luggage was loaded on the flight, apparently the earlier BA flight from Heathrow also had no luggage, so we were lied to on a couple of occasions!
No BA staff were to be found at Istanbul,it was left to three ladies in the baggage claim to deal with an entire flight of angry and tired BA passengers for the second time in one day.
The passengers included the Brazilian swimming team who had lost all their equipment in the fiasco. We eventually left the airport 2 hours after landing with no luggage.
I was working an important ICT project over the weekend and had to take time to go and buy some replacement clothes.
I am now back in the UK and my luggage arrived after a nine day trip, looking at the labels attached it would appear that it also has been to Istanbul and back!
On my return to Heathrow once again the lifts were not working!
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