Tens of thousands of bags are stranded in London Heathrow. The airport is so overwhelmed that it has to limit capacity. Delta therefore had to help itself – with an unusual solution.
Delta Air Lines’ Airbus A330 took off from London Heathrow for Detroit on July 11. But there were no passengers on flight DL9888. 1000 pieces of luggage. They were previously on UK airport has been dead for weeks due to staff shortages has problems.
More and more images of mountains with suitcases and bags at the airport are circulating on social media. The luggage left behind is now piling up even in the public areas. Delta therefore began helping itself and collecting stranded baggage at Heathrow.
Made the best of an uncomfortable situation
The 1,000 passenger bags were eventually taken to the owners by Delta teams, a spokesman told aeroTELEGRAPH. The airline made the best of an unpleasant situation. The fact that no travelers were allowed to fly on board the Airbus A330-200 with the registration number N854NW was also due to the problems at Heathrow.
The decision was taken following “a scheduled flight had to be canceled due to passenger traffic restrictions at Heathrow,” a Delta spokesman said. Apparently, this was a result of the capacity limitation that the airport enforced at the weekend.
Capacity cap at Heathrow
In recent weeks, the number of departing passengers has regularly exceeded 100,000 per day and there have been moments when the level of service has dropped to an unacceptable level, the airport said. “We have therefore made the difficult decision to introduce a capacity cap with effect.”
Amsterdam Airport Schiphol had already taken a similar step. After the unmanageably long queues at the security checkpoints, the airport already decided in June to cap the number of passengers. The maximum number of travelers that Schiphol can handle each day varies from day to day, reaching up to 67,500 on the busiest days in July and up to 72,500 in August.