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Home » Delta Air Lines » Delta Air Lines Flies A330-200 “Baggage Flight” From London
Delta Air Lines

Delta Air Lines Flies A330-200 “Baggage Flight” From London

Matthew Klint Posted onJuly 14, 2022July 15, 2022 19 Comments

Delta Air Lines Baggage Flight

Want to know how bad the luggage gridlock has become at London Heathrow? So bad that Delta Air Lines operated a special Airbus A330-200 filled with over 1,000 pieces of passenger baggage as part of its effort to reunite passengers with their luggage (and reposition an aircraft).

Delta Air Lines Baggage Flight From London: 1,000 Bags, No Passengers

Heathrow is currently overrun with travel demand as the busy summer travel season has been met with insufficient ground staff staffing. The result is that thousands of travelers have been separated from their bags, sometime for several days.

Earlier this week, Delta dispatched an A330-200 to London, filled it with over 1,000 bags, then flew it to Detroit (DTW). From Detroit, the bags were further transported across the USA to their owners.

Delta described the move as a “creative solution” to “accelerate movement of delayed bags.”

The move comes as Heathrow has enacted a flight cap of 100,000 passengers departing each day through September 11, 2022, blaming its choice on a shortage of ground handlers:

“We started recruiting back in November last year in anticipation of capacity recovering this summer, and by the end of July, we will have as many people working in security as we had pre-pandemic. We have also reopened and moved 25 airlines into Terminal 4 to provide more space for passengers and grown our passenger service team.

“New colleagues are learning fast but are not yet up to full speed. However, there are some critical functions in the airport which are still significantly under resourced, in particular ground handlers, who are contracted by airlines to provide check-in staff, load and unload bags and turnaround aircraft. They are doing the very best they can with the resources available and we are giving them as much support possible, but this is a significant constraint to the airport’s overall capacity.”

It isn’t clear, yet, how many airlines will respect the demand by Heathrow to curtail flights. This flight, however, came before the new passenger limit went into effect and while laudable, Delta had to get back the flight to Detroit anyway…it just made sense to fill the plane with bags.

My advice remains to leave the checked bag at home unless you really don’t need it, which would then beg the question why you would bring it in the first place.


> Read More: Pack Light And Don’t Check Bags This Summer…


CONCLUSION

Checked baggage is so backlogged at London Heathrow that Delta felt the need to take advantage of a flight cancellation to dispatch a special baggage flight filled with over 1,000 bags. With Heathrow conceding it is unable to cope with the all the summer traffic and baggage handling (an airline function) facing understaffing, you may wish to consider connecting through another airport in the next few months if your tickets are not already booked.

image: Delta

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About Author

Matthew Klint

Matthew is an avid traveler who calls Los Angeles home. Each year he travels more than 200,000 miles by air and has visited more than 135 countries. Working both in the aviation industry and as a travel consultant, Matthew has been featured in major media outlets around the world and uses his Live and Let's Fly blog to share the latest news in the airline industry, commentary on frequent flyer programs, and detailed reports of his worldwide travel.

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19 Comments

  1. Stuart Reply
    July 14, 2022 at 9:48 am

    Imagining the pilots telling the joke, “What a flight, had to deal with a bunch of old bags the entire way.”

  2. Santastico Reply
    July 14, 2022 at 10:24 am

    Is there any statistics showing how many more passengers are flying through Heathrow this summer vs past summers? I can’t understand how come if not adding extra gates or extra flights all of the sudden airports cannot handle bags anymore. As for the bag handlers, where did they go? Did they get better jobs? Are they staying home watching the Wimbledon? Seriously, where are all these people that should be working and are not? How are they paying their bills if they are not working?

    • Mick Reply
      July 14, 2022 at 10:27 am

      Well, they got laid off when travel went to 5% of the year before. And I assume found other jobs. So it’s hard to rehire people again now that the economy is taking off.

      Half the restaurants were closed at gatwick two weeks ago even though the terminal was packed.

      • Santastico Reply
        July 14, 2022 at 10:43 am

        Found another jobs where? Here in the US nobody wants to work. Companies cannot find anyone to hire. Kids went to a fast food restaurant the other day and only drive thru was open. They said they don’t have enough workers to open the store. Recession is coming and people will starve if they don’t work. Unless Government sends them checks to stay in their basements.

        • Frank Reply
          July 14, 2022 at 12:37 pm

          People don’t want to work? Unemployment has been 3.6% for 4 months. It’s a RECORD low. Workforce participation is up 16% from last year. The only part of the workforce that is not employed that is growing is people prevented from seeking work due to the pandemic, which grew from 455K to 610K in June which was also a record. You ask where these people are working? Everywhere. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf

          • Santastico
            July 14, 2022 at 12:54 pm

            Yes, I figured out the gap is all people that died from Covid. That is what we are missing to fill up all the job openings.

  3. AW Reply
    July 14, 2022 at 10:40 am

    I feel downright lucky. We made it through LHR on BA three times with connecting flights over past two weeks, complete with luggage. Security recheck was a full on mess (especially the misuse of the “fast track” lane).

  4. JamesP Reply
    July 14, 2022 at 10:47 am

    I believe that on another blog it was mentioned that no bags were flown inside the cabins, only in the cargo hold.

  5. GetReal Reply
    July 14, 2022 at 10:50 am

    This is not unique or special. Cargo repositioning flights are the norm in the industry.

  6. Heather Reply
    July 14, 2022 at 1:39 pm

    In the past two weeks, I have flown thru Stockholm, Oslo and Chicago. Each had massive piles of checked baggage clogging the claim baggage claim area.

    • Jan Reply
      July 14, 2022 at 3:46 pm

      I’ve seen this also in Copenhagen. It’s an absolute sea of unclaimed bags (of course the SAS breakdown might have played a part in that too)

  7. DEE Reply
    July 14, 2022 at 4:01 pm

    I guess EU has the same problems with getting people to work as we do???But they are able to retire earlier over there making it even worse…and the socialist -union government systems keep the people out of the workforce.

    • Eliyahu Reply
      July 14, 2022 at 4:18 pm

      Wait until you find out about the UK’s relationship with the EU

    • Billy Bob Reply
      July 15, 2022 at 1:44 am

      Nobody wants to work for dogs**t wages… must be socialists are to blame

      • Jerry Reply
        July 15, 2022 at 10:39 am

        Are the Socialists to blame for the $7.25/hr minimum wage in Texas?

  8. proschwit Reply
    July 14, 2022 at 4:15 pm

    I like Delta Airlines I think they are one of the best in the US but this flight here is nothing special. This flight took place before Heathrow enacted the 100,000 passenger per day cap. That means Delta of their own volition canceled an A330 passenger segment which dis-serviced what was likely a fully loaded aircraft worth of passengers.

    Transporting over 1,000 bags on a widebody the size of an A330-200 isn’t a big deal. It could have been done with a full load of passengers as well . It would have required Delta hold off some if not most of the freight and mail, but that same aircraft could have easily accommodated the 400 or so bags from a “normal” flight plus an additional 1,000+ bags in the cargo hold with space to spare.

  9. Mark Reply
    July 14, 2022 at 4:49 pm

    Lucky said this flight would have operated as a positioning ferry anyway, since it operated as a passenger section to LHR. It was needed to cover a passenger flight back to LHR that evening but couldn’t operate as its normal passenger flight out of LHR due to the customer limit.

  10. SN Reply
    July 15, 2022 at 1:07 am

    Lucky is definitely on it here, this blog isn’t. One myst be an imbecele to believe delta flew a “charter flight” on their “own dime” just for passenger bags. Delta made a blatant lie that they did this for their customers instead of the fact that they did this just to get an empty plane repositioned back in the US… and that should be the headline of this blog posting.
    Makes me wonder what else gets regurgitated on blogs…

    • Matthew Klint Reply
      July 15, 2022 at 1:20 am

      Read beyond the headline before hurling petty insults. Also, you misspelled imbecile.

      Lucky is wrong, too, btw. He said:

      This plane was supposed to operate flight DL17 from London to Detroit on July 11, but that flight ended up getting canceled due to the need to limit the number of passengers.

      The passenger limit did not go into effect until July 12th…

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