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Things had appeared to be going well with the opening of Heathrow’s new Terminal 2 with United Airlines, Air Canada, Air China, and ANA now ensconced in the terminal and no sign of a repeat of the disastrous opening of Terminal 5 in 2008.
However, gremlins seem to have emerged.
There was a baggage system failure affecting passengers at Terminal 2 last week. For reasons we don’t entirely understand Terminal 2 is using Terminal 1’s baggage system.
And we don’t know if this is connected, but there have been very well publicised intermittent problems with the baggage system at Terminal 5 caused by software issues over the past few days.
To allow further testing of the baggage system, Thai Airways and Turkish Airlines moves from Terminal 3 to Terminal 2 tomorrow (2 July 2014) has been postponed until Thursday 28 August 2014.
Eva Air’s move from Terminal 3 to Terminal 2 will go ahead as planned on 2 July 2014. As will Avianca’s launch of flights from Heathrow in Terminal 2 on 4 July 2014.
For anyone concerned about checking in bags on forthcoming flights, we would always advise carrying essential items (medicines, documentation, data storage devices etc) and a change of clothing in hand baggage. Checked luggage should always be clearly labelled on both the inside and outside of the bag.
Also, if travelling with a partner it’s a good idea to split each other’s belongings across each other’s bags to minimise the impact of one bag going astray.
Travel insurance is always a must and if the worst happens, once a bag is reported lost, we would advise letting travel insurance deal with the consequences and not spending time chasing the airline. In most cases bags are eventually reunited with the owner, even though communication in the interim is not particularly helpful.
