World Mar. 30, 2008 - 07:03AM JST ( 2 )

LONDON —

British Airways admitted Saturday that 15,000 bags are lost or stuck at London Heathrow airport’s new terminal, adding to the frustrations of passengers already hit by severe delays and canceled flights.

The national flag carrier canceled 66 short-haul and European flights Saturday—12 more than originally announced and taking the number of cancelations since Heathrow’s Terminal 5 opened on Thursday to nearly 250.

A further 37 flights are expected to be canceled Sunday, the airline said amid claims of a public relations disaster for a facility that was designed to alleviate notorious overcrowding at the west London site.

BA—which formerly styled itself “the world’s favorite airline”—said Saturday’s operation had gone “reasonably well” as they fought to deal with the backlog caused by computer glitches in the new baggage handling system.

But the airline said thousands of bags were now piled up across the airport belonging to travelers who had either given up or flown on without them.

“It is 15,000 we need to reunite with their owners,” a spokeswoman said. “To put this into context, we process 75,000 bags (across Heathrow) everyday.

“We are trying to do everything we can to get them back. For UK customers this could mean a courier service, and for those overseas, we are looking at next available flights or sea travel.”

The baggage chaos is the latest embarrassment for BA, which has exclusive use of the $8.7-billion terminal that was opened to great fanfare by Queen Elizabeth II earlier this month.

Meanwhile, passengers arriving Saturday morning said many of the public pay phones and all but one of the 16 lifts were out of order, although that is the responsibility of airport operator BAA.

BA promised, and said it had kept to, maximum delays of 30 or 40 minutes, but passengers said that did not take into account cancelations and rebookings.

“We’ve spent a whole day in here when we could have been in Paris having fun,” said Patti Conroy, from Seattle. “I’ll just go home if it’s canceled again.”

BA laid on a coach and ferry for a party of about 40 pupils heading to Germany for an eight-day language exchange trip after their flight to Stuttgart was canceled as one parent described the situation as “embarrassing.”

Sky News television claimed it had been banned from filming inside the terminal.

Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly said she had spoken to both BA and operator BAA, which is owned by Spanish construction group Ferrovial, telling them the problems are their responsibility but the government stood ready to assist.

The Times newspaper said BA was facing fines of up to 5,000 pounds per passenger for breaking European rules by misleading stranded passengers about a 100-pound cap on their compensatory hotel bills.

There have also been reports of scuffles between baggage handlers, staff and passengers while the Unite union said workers’ concerns about baggage handling procedures, staff familiarization and training had “fallen on deaf ears.”

The Financial Times, meanwhile, said the chaos had forced British Airways to postpone an advertising campaign scheduled for next week that had planned to trumpet the speed with which passengers could move through T5.

T5—the first new facility to be built at the airport in 20 years—is the size of 50 football pitches, took 15 years to plan and build and is designed to handle 30 million passengers a year.

Heathrow, used by 68 million passengers annually, has for years been plagued by overcrowding in its collection of aging buildings owing to soaring demand for air travel.

AFP