In the third incident in less than a month, hundreds of travelers who had just arrived on overseas flights Saturday night stood around idle baggage carousels for hours waiting for their luggage at Orlando International Airport.
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“I knew that something was seriously wrong, but no one was telling us anything,” said a Tampa resident whose Air France jet from Paris landed at OIA at about 8 p.m.
The man, who asked to be identified only by his first name, Adam, said he waited two hours before eventually leaving the airport’s Terminal C without his luggage.
Airport officials on Monday blamed the delay on a large number of travelers during one of the busiest travel weeks this year and on a backlog of luggage that needed to be searched, labeled, loaded and unloaded.
“This past Saturday, Terminal C had a high number of departing bags that required additional screening — resulting in a backup,” spokeswoman Angela Starke said in an email. “Contingency plans were implemented but were not effective due to the volume of bags….The system took a few hours to return to normal operations.”
She added Terminal C — which accommodates about 9 million of the airport’s 58 million passengers — is mostly dedicated to handle international flights, therefore “there can be a higher volume of luggage per person.”
This latest incident comes after hundreds of Virgin Atlantic passengers became stuck in the same terminal at OIA for more than five hours on June 27.
In that case, however, travelers were told by the U.S. Customs and Border Control that they could be arrested if they left the airport without their bags, according to passengers.
Airport staff and the Orlando Police Department later denied that anyone was threatened with arrest if they left the facility.
The federal agency handles passengers arriving on international flights and requires them to retrieve their luggage before leaving, according to the OIA and the airlines. The police department handles security at the airport.
Airport officials blamed that incident on bad weather, including lightning in the surrounding area, and airline “staffing levels.”
Virgin Atlantic later apologized to passengers for the delay and also said it was caused by “adverse weather.”
Then on July 1, hundreds of travelers from different airlines waited hours for their luggage after a mechanical failure in Terminal C, according to Starke.
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“The system was back up and running in a few hours,” Starke said Monday regarding that incident.
Passengers again said they were told they could not leave the airport without their bags, but were not told what was causing the delay.
Airport officials later said a contractor solved the mechanical problem with the machines that deliver baggage from the airplane to the carousels.
Adam said that after getting off his plane on Saturday following an hours-long flight, he made his way to the luggage carousels and saw hundreds of other people lingering around.
“The baggage returns were not moving,” he said. “I waited about 15 minutes and then I started asking people. I asked the airport concierges. They said: ‘You just got here, but there are people here that have been waiting for about two hours.’ They told me they didn’t know what was going on.”
Adam said a two-hour wait he decided he couldn’t take it anymore. He walked through the checkpoint for U.S. Customs and Boarder Protection with just his backpack and left the airport without his luggage.
He called Air France when he arrived home, and the airline delivered his three pieces of luggage on Monday, he said.
He said he wished airport or airline officials would at least try to find out the reason for the luggage delay and tell passengers.
“There was no communication at all,” he said. “Nobody knew the timeline. How long it would take. Are the machines broken? Is it short staffed? Or what?”
Starke said that even though the airport — also known by its call letters as MCO — is “not experiencing a widespread or ongoing baggage disruption” following the three incidents, its staff is working to avoid future problems.
“Any delayed baggage falls short of how we want our passengers to experience MCO,” she said in an email. “Our onsite staff is instructed to provide assistance to passengers, recognizing the inconvenience and thanking them for their patience. They also provide resources, such as water, and give directions.”
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