Delta Air Lines charters a flight to get 1000 bags back to travellers

Delta Air Lines used an Airbus A330-200 to transport 1,000 bags back to customers. Photo / Unsplash

While some passenger's bags have been buried under a mountain of luggage at understaffed airports, 1000 suitcases received luxury treatment with their own charter flight.

After 1000 bags were stranded in London's Heathrow Airport due to cancelled flights, Delta Air Lines got creative and had the bags flown back to their owners in the US.

On Wednesday, Delta CEO Ed Bastian implied Delta had commissioned a plane to retrieve customer luggage that had been piling up at Heathrow.

"We had a separate charter just to repatriate bags back to customers that have been stranded because of some of the operational issues that European airports were having," Bastian said.

"We did that on our own nickel just to reunite our Delta customers with their bags as quickly as possible."

However, the truth wasn't quite as altruistic.

On Monday, July 11, a Delta flight from London to Detroit was cancelled last minute due to Heathrow's new daily passenger limit. However, the plane still needed to get to back to Detroit so it could fly passengers to London.

Delta then saw a win-win opportunity to fill the plane with delayed checked bags and reunite them with customers in the US.

"Delta flight 9888 from Heathrow to Delta's Detroit hub flew 1,000 bags back to the US, where teams then forwarded the bags on to our customers," a Delta spokesperson told Travel + Leisure.

As fun as it is to imagine the luggage sitting up in the first class seats, they did not travel in the passenger cabin. Instead, as per safety regulations, they travelled in the normal baggage bins below.

This week Heathrow imposed a daily cap on passengers flying out of the airport and asked airlines to stop selling tickets for summer flights. The measure is the latest attempt to quell the large-scale disrruption caused by staff-shortages, Covid-19 sickness and pent-up demand for travel.

However, it has only put more pressure on airlines like Delta to cancel already-booked flights.

Even cute and fluffy fliers have been turned away. Air Canada announced they would not accept pets in the baggage hold until September 12 "due to longer than usual airport delays, and for the safety and comfort of your pet."

So, how do travellers avoid entering into a long-distance relationship with their suitcase? Check out our five top tips.