A Highland mum has said Loganair “over promises and under delivers” after her son’s luggage went missing on a flight to Inverness from Manchester.
Emma Shenton said she “fully understands” ongoing issues with the shortage of baggage handlers at UK airports, but felt she had to contact the Press & Journal after comments from Loganair’s chief executive John Hinkles last week.
Mr Hinkles urged people to “please, please pack and travel as you normally would” after the GMB union advised passengers to consider not checking in their bags amid shortages of ground and air staff.
Loganair has apologised to the family, explaining issues with ground handling crews in Manchester had resulted in lost property and delays in reuniting it with owners.
One bag makes it to Inverness, another goes missing
Originally from Inverness, but now living in Staffordshire, Mrs Shenton was visiting her parents in the Highland capital with her son Ben between May 27 and June 1, who had taken revision books with him ahead of upcoming exams.
After checking in two bags, only one arrived when they touched down in Scotland, which she described at that point as “not too much of a deal”.
Mrs Shenton was then told that the airline would try and get the missing bag retagged and sent on the next flight the following day, with about nine other people in the same situation, including a couple travelling to Fort William for a wedding.
After getting no success from handlers at Inverness Airport, she decided to take action by calling customer services at Loganair.
Mrs Shenton said: “Never in my life have I ever experienced such little assistance from a customer services team.
“They were quite abrupt. That it’s not their problem, you’ve got to deal with the handlers and I tried to have the conversation that we’ve exchanged money with yourself.
“So really, it’s the airline that has a contract with the baggage handlers not your customer.”
Her husband, Matt McDonald, who was still in Staffordshire tried contacting various numbers to relocate the luggage, but “didn’t get anywhere”.
After Mrs Shenton “went round the houses” and tried a “last ditch attempt” with customer services, Mr McDonald decided to take action by driving to Manchester Airport himself to find the bag.
At the airport, he managed to speak to representatives from the company in charge of handling the luggage after going to the airport’s customer service desk.
After they looked into the situation, it was found out the luggage had been moved from the airport’s Terminal 3 to Terminal 1 and then put in a room with other people’s luggage.
The luggage was retrieved after “great help” from the firm, but Mrs Shenton remains critical of Dalcross Handling and Menzies, who were responsible for baggage handling at either end and said “neither of them managed to do anything, nor have they contacted us”.
Loganair apologises for missing luggage
A spokeswoman for Loganair added: “We offer sincere apologies to Mrs Shenton for any unsatisfactory experiences when dealing with our customer service team to solve the ongoing issue over lost property.
“Issues with ground handling staff at Manchester Airport resulted in the lost property and a backlog in trying to clear this at the airport meant that delays in resolving the problem occurred.
“In situations like these, our role is to liaise with the airport in question to support our customers in tracking down their property. Our team continued to communicate with the airport in this case to do all that we could.
“We will be looking into any communication issues between our customer service team and the passenger to ensure learnings where required are implemented with our team.”
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