I mentioned at the end of my last post that British Airways seemed past the turmoil of problems surrounding the new Terminal 5 at Heathrow.   30 minutes later I was watching ground crews unload all the bags from the hold and manually check them against a list.   That process took over an hour.   The delay in London added up to a 2 hour delay reaching LAX.   When we got to LAX we had to taxi for a very long time to the most remote part of the airport, instead of going right to the International Terminal.   Then, to make matters worse, the jetway operator couldn't get the walkway to line up to the airplane.  That meant about 10 minutes of pointless delay.   We finally got on buses to the terminal, customs was packed taking another 30 minutes.  Another 15 minutes looking everywhere for my suitcase lasted until 11:00 PM, 30 minutes after my connecting flight to Phoenix had departed. 

The last part of the fiasco:  Nobody staffing the Lost Baggage desk from British Airways.  That left more than a few very angry people.

Throughout the whole trip, I was calm.  I have learned that it rarely does any good to get angry.  And the people on the plane were very apologetic.  At one point the captain came out to explain the situation and said he could have shared the information from the cockpit, but wanted to face the disappointed passengers.   He and the other crew were obviously frustrated and embarrassed by things that were outside of their control.

I am frustrated and embarrassed by my profession.  From what I read, this is largely a failure of a complex software system and a larger project to operate Terminal 5.   BAA seems to have ignored, through ignorance or ego, a similar disaster from the new Denver Airport a few years ago.   They probably trusted the hype of IBM and the other vendors that their software would "just work" without comprehensive testing that simulated real world situations.

But I don't hold British Airways totally blameless.   I don't know the details of what they could have done better at a higher level, but at a personal level they messed things up at LAX by not having staff on hand when one of their main flights from Heathrow arrived.  There were only two BA staff to handle dozens of angry and frustrated  customers.   These same two had to work the baggage area and then rush up to man the lost baggage desk.   Second, they offered no compensation for my missed connection and subsequent overnight sleeping in the terminal.   They said it was because I didn't book the flight through them.   Very poor customer service.  

As for my missing luggage?   The xeroxed form letter they gave me said to expect it within 36 hours.  It is going on 72 and they don't have any update.