‘Domino effect’: lost, delayed luggage pileups reach Winnipeg hub

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This article was published 30/06/2022 (1285 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba’s largest airport has not avoided the lost and unclaimed luggage peril sweeping the nation.

At least 120 bags waited to be reunited with their owners Thursday morning at Winnipeg Richardson International Airport’s baggage services.

“I think that’s our new normal, to be honest,” a WestJet employee said of the sitting luggage.

The employee, who did not want to be named due to potential workplace fallout, appeared stressed. They said the luggage was a mix of ready-to-be-delivered and lost. Aside from Christmas 2021, they’d never seen so many bags in the space — certainly not pre-COVID-19 pandemic.

“If there’s one (flight) delay, that means that bag is not coming,” the employee said. “It doesn’t have time to go on the next plane, so then it comes the next few days.

“It just sits here. It’s like a domino effect.”

Vikas Patel waited near the unclaimed bags. On his agenda: finding his mother-in-law’s suitcase.

She flew in from Mumbai, with stops in Frankfurt, Germany, and Montreal. A delay in Frankfurt complicated matters, Patel said. “I was prepared for the (lost luggage) situation.”

He waited in line to speak with Air Canada staff — there were a few people ahead of him — and learned the whereabouts of his relative’s luggage was unknown.

However, another flight from Montreal was landing. Patel figured he’d wait to see if the suitcase was on it.

“She doesn’t have any clothes or anything,” he said. “I hope we receive it today.”

Otherwise, the bags must be shipped to his home in Dauphin, he said.

The local airport’s unclaimed luggage is “a trickle-down effect from what’s happening in other places,” said Tyler MacAfee, Winnipeg Airports Authority vice-president of communications and government relations.

Recent photos on social media show hundreds of bags in limbo at Toronto Pearson International Airport.

“People are connecting through those airports, and the bags just are not making the connections, so they’re coming in on a later flight,” MacAfee said.

The luggage stays at Winnipeg’s airport until their owners retrieve them or the airline delivers them. “We don’t normally see bags there for any extended kind of period of time,” he said.

The stacks are “nothing like what we’re seeing in those other places,” MacAfee added.

“Our security wait times are still really reasonable,” he said. “People are getting in and out of the airport pretty efficiently, so we’re doing OK for right now.”

One Manitoba woman, who declined to give her name, called Toronto Pearson International Airport “pandemonium.”

She’d left the Ontario hub Thursday morning, and arrived in Winnipeg without her luggage. She said the conveyor belt to shuttle suitcases in Toronto wasn’t working, and workers had assured her someone would get the bags to the proper planes.

“Long processing times at airports and remaining pandemic requirements continue to result in flight delays and, in some instances, cancellations,” a spokesperson for Air Canada wrote in an email.

The waits affect customers and employee operations, the spokesperson wrote. They said staffing issues at the government level and airport capacity and baggage system problems have contributed to a network where many customers aren’t landing with their luggage.

On Wednesday, Air Canada announced it had cut more than 15 per cent of its scheduled flights for July and August.

It has 32,000 employees — nearly 2019’s staffing level — and is operating at 80 per cent of its 2019 summer schedule, the spokesperson wrote.

It’s redeploying its Jetz charter fleet to move delayed baggage, among other measures.

WestJet is flying 32 per cent fewer flights through Toronto Pearson in July than it did in 2019, according to the company’s chief executive officer.

The airline made the schedule reductions between March and May.

“While progress is being made, we recognize at times, we are collectively still falling short on delivering the experience our guests expect and for that we apologize,” Madison Kruger, WestJet media relations adviser, wrote in an email.

She listed a number of actions WestJet is taking to improve guests’ travels, including hiring more than 1,000 people across all operational areas.

Forty-one per cent of Thursday’s flights across Canada were late, according to tracking site Data Wazo (as of 3:05 p.m.). Eight per cent of flights had been cancelled.

– with files from Chris Kitching and The Canadian Press

gabrielle.piche@freepress.mb.ca