Thousands of passengers were left stranded at Heathrow airport on Wednesday as a baggage system failure caused a number of flights to be delayed or cancelled.
The problem at the world's busiest airport - handling more than 480,000 flights a year -began on Tuesday at Terminal 4 when the automatic baggage sorting computer crashed while being upgraded.
Airport operator BAA, which owns Heathrow, said the crash prevented workers from being able to place luggage into the area where it is sorted for flights, with British Airways (BA) passengers on long-haul flights being hit the worst.
BA operates as the main airline at Heathrow’s Terminal 4, which handles domestic and international flights . Other smaller carriers managed to avoid the chaos and continue with business by handling passengers’ luggage by hand.
BAA has urged all passengers to check luggage rules with their airlines before travelling to Heathrow for flights .
The problem follows a damming report by the Air Transport Users Council (AUC) into the worsening state of airports’ luggage handling.
The report found that Heathrow suffered more delays than any other major European airport for the second year running, with around 35 per cent of its flights experiencing delays last year.
The AUC found an average of 16.6 bags per thousand passengers were delayed on flights operated by major European airlines in 2007, compared with a figure of 15.7 bags per thousand passengers in 2006.
TAP Air Portugal was the worst-performing airline last year with a delayed bags ratio of 27.8 per 1,000 passengers, while BA was also listed as one of the worst-performing carriers.
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