Letter from Heathrow Airport
You’ve read about it all summer – chaos in the air travel industry, especially at London’s Heathrow Airport. Delays, cancellations, and lost luggage, especially that. Well, it’s September now, and someone has misplaced or lost two checked bags of ours on a flight from Frankfort Airport to London. One may be on its way on a later flight from Frankfurt, Germany (our departure city), we were told, but there is no information available on the other bag, which is my wife’s. We are now stuck in the baggage claim area at Heathrow because we dare not leave the airport – we’d have to clear security to get back in, and as we don’t have any new reservations or boarding passes this would prove difficult. My wife has already completed a document authorizing Lufthansa (the offending airline) to send her bag on to our home in America when they find it. (But, as Roseanne Barr used to say, “Like that’s gonna happen.” We shall see.)
The problem started this morning (Wednesday, September 21), when we were forced to check our carry-on baggage at the gate in Frankfurt; this was infuriating because passenger after passenger boarded, often with “carry-ons” that were clearly the size of ours or larger. We were assured that the luggage would be there for us at baggage claim (not at the gangway, which in itself was a surprise). But the two pieces weren’t.
(Footnote: another passenger’s bag was taken, a claim check made for him, yet when we boarded he had the bag with him, clearly a mid-size bag, too. I guess I didn’t protest loudly enough.)
But I did take a claim check with the barcode for my bag so we do know (well, we think we know) where that bag is. According to the Department of Missing, Misplaced and Mishandled Baggage here, they used the barcode to determine that my bag was put on the last flight from Frankfurt to London, which left hours after our flight, so we’re waiting on that one. To add insult to injury, as the old saying goes, there was another flight from Frankfurt to London that left only two hours after ours, but Lufthansa didn’t put the bag on that one, but apparently held it back for the very last flight of the evening, keeping us here from late afternoon to nearly midnight (I have two hours more to wait as I write this).
But my wife didn’t peel off the bar code for her checked bag so we don’t know where it is. Oddly – no, alarmingly – the Department of Missing, Misplaced and Mishandled Baggage said they could trace the bag from her boarding ticket even without the baggage barcode, but that didn’t work. So, they really don’t know where it is, and I’m not sure we can even prove she had a bag!
Sehr schlecht!
I’m sitting near a bank of cell phone chargers now; only two out of eight work here in baggage claim at Terminal 2 in Heathrow. My wife is using one and we gave up the other to another stranded traveler, and I’m using my laptop as an alternative charger for the phone. I carry my laptop with me at all times when I travel, including a change of underwear and a toothbrush, all in my backpack. I don’t give up my backpack.
Abandoned luggage? Kein Problem.
We’ve been sitting by the cell phone chargers in the baggage claim area for hours now and my wife noted that a large, hard plastic piece of luggage has been lying on its side near us the whole time, unattended. It’s not ours. I decided to ask airport personnel to look into this – I was repeatedly dismissed by Heathrow employees (four, to be exact) who all said not to worry. “Probably someone just forgot it,” I was told by one fellow sitting behind a window. He was unmoved, literally and figuratively. But the loudspeaker warns every 15 minutes or so that unattended luggage will be hauled away and “destroyed;” in America, the slogan is, “See something, say something,” as most of you know.
I was sent to look for “security” by one employee but could not find anyone in security, and I had to go looking on my own. Finally, I spotted two officers in uniform from Border Force (who were traveling, not on duty) and they agreed I was doing the right thing, but this was not their responsibility! The female officer did help me find someone who would look into the matter, though, so that was something. This other fellow came and looked over the piece, advised us against touching it, and also said not to worry – there’s unattended luggage all the time at the airport, he said. Then he walked away.
“If you see some wires,” he added before leaving, well that would be different. Oh, the terrorists from Beavis and Butthead country would obviously leave the wires outside the suitcase just so we’d know it was a bomb in there. (If you’re too young to have seen the original Beavis and Butthead cartoons from Mike Judge, find them!)
Well, how will all this end? Like a good mystery or serial, I want to leave you hanging, asking yourselves the following questions: Will the promised arrival on the last plane from Frankfurt actually have the author’s luggage? Will his wife’s luggage ever be found? Come back next for the exciting conclusion … !
(But not to worry about unattended luggage, of course. It’s always a false alarm until it’s not a false alarm, and it’s impossible to get some people out of their comfort zone. I will write Heathrow management, though, and ask them to stop broadcasting their annoying statements on the loudspeakers promising to “destroy” unattended luggage.)
So sorry to hear you are having so much trouble on your journey. I pray you and Shirley get home safely.