2023-08-03 16:35:42
This is an “unprecedented failure”. Paris-Orly, the second French airport, was disrupted on Thursday August 3 by a malfunction in the baggage handling system. The causes of this breakdown, noted at the opening of the platform before dawn, had not been identified at the beginning of the followingnoon, according to an airport source who evokes “mess” and “significant delays”.
Estimating “that around 10,000 passengers” traveling on 40 flights were affected, the airport manager, the ADP Groupassured that technical teams were hard at work.
“Outage in progress in the Orly 4 baggage handling system,” ADP explained in a message on Twitterrenamed X, specifying that the other terminals of Orly, the second French airport platform following Paris-Charles-de-Gaulle, were not concerned.
Terminal 4 welcomes companies serving overseas or foreign countries, in particular the Maghreb.
Of “all the flights departing from T4 since this morning, many are late, significant delays, an hour or more,” the airport source explained.
“All baggage is not processed as quickly as it should be because the vast majority is processed by hand,” she added. Consequence: “A lot of luggage is stored, with passengers leaving but not the luggage”.
A “critical situation”
Air Caraïbes and French Bee planes had to take off without checked baggage, Marc Rochet, the leader of these companies, told AFP, referring to a “critical situation”.
This breakdown, which occurs “during peak periods” in the summer, “creates a lot of disorder”, he lamented to AFP, evaluating “between one and three hours” the take-off delays for his planes.
Regarding the luggage left at Orly, “we will be forced to redirect them within 24 hours, and we already apologize to our customers”, added Marc Rochet. “We had no other possibility, otherwise we completely blocked the system”, he justified.
Even if all the available teams are mobilized to adapt the device and minimize the disturbances, “it is not the breakdown of a luggage belt which must block a French airport of the importance of Orly”, regretted the manager of ‘business.
According to ADP, which also apologized for the inconvenience caused, “workarounds have been put in place in collaboration with the companies and the assistants, for example the postponement of flights on Orly 1, 2 and 3”.
“Some flights may also be transferred to Paris-Charles-de-Gaulle airport”, according to the manager, while the airport source conceded that the schedule for “return to normal (was) unknown at the time current”.
“What is happening at Orly is not acceptable, we cannot have hours of problems sorting luggage”, reacted the Minister Delegate for Transports Clément Beaune Thursday followingnoon during a visit to the Gare du Nord in Paris.
“I know that all the teams are mobilized to fix the technical problem,” added Clément Beaune, who presented a series of commitments in mid-July to improve the quality of service at French airports, in particular in view of Olympic Games of 2024.
“It is exactly this kind of very concrete point that we must monitor,” said the minister. “A link in the chain that jumps, you have a very great difficulty”.
This incident broke out when the summer in Paris airports had started better than in 2022, with operations generally fluid despite traffic levels close to 2019, before the health crisis.
A year ago, 35,000 pieces of luggage were “lost” following a three-hour strike by ADP employees at Paris-Charles-de-Gaulle.
With AFP
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