Mass fights and attempts to crawl through luggage hatches and conveyor belts to the airport in search of their unsorted luggage – such scenes from Manchester airport have gone online. According to a statement from local media, thousands of airport workers have been laid off during the pandemic, and those who remain are “working three shifts, suffering from fatigue”, which only leads to more chaos, and luggage is simply dumped on the ground like unwanted junk.
“Attempts of tourists to crawl through the baggage hatch onto the airfield to pick up their suitcases are happening all the time,” said experts investigating Channel 4 Dispatches. An “undercover” reporter who works as a baggage handler at Swissport reports that passengers who resort to attempts to enter the air zone and take their luggage, with scandals up to a fight, happen all the time. The video published in the newspaper is just one such case. In it, tourists sneak through the “gate” of the baggage belt into the closed part of the airport, loudly chanting: “Where are our things?”
“This damn chaos is caused by the fact that they have no staff,” the author of the investigation declares. According to him, unloading luggage is a physically demanding job that is usually done by two or more people. Now, it is not uncommon for one person to work on the line, with shifts starting at 3 a.m. and working conditions being “absolutely brutal.” The fact is that Swissport, a baggage handling company used by many airlines, has laid off more than half of its 6,000 baggage handling staff during the pandemic. And it will be very difficult to recruit them again shortly.