Swiss Air flight departs for Spain leaving all passenger luggage behind

After waiting one hour and 16 minutes for luggage to arrive the Swiss Air Lines plane made an operational decision to leave without them. Photo / Fabian Joy, Unsplash

Passengers flying from Zurich to Spain this weekend were shocked to discover not a single piece of luggage waiting at the carousel.

The Swiss International Air Lines operated flight WK226 to Bilbao arrived on Saturday night without loading luggage. Passengers reported waiting hours in the arrivals hall, with neither suitcases nor information forthcoming.

Swiss newspaper Blick reported that Swiss Air Lines had operated the delayed service on behalf of carrier Edelweiss. As neither carrier had any ground staff at Bilbao airport it was eventually up to Spanish airline Iberia to break the bad news to passengers.

An airline spokesperson told press agency AFP the decision was taken “for operational reasons” to fly without luggage, as the plane was needed for the return service to Zurich.

Spokesman Kavin Ampalam confirmed that 111 passengers were flown to Spain, but not a single piece of luggage.

The situation had come about through a “shortage of ground staff” at Zurich.

Passengers of WK226 said that the captain had blamed a long wait on the tarmac on a “shortage of trained personnel” but they were unaware that their bags were nowhere to be found.

Delays in ground handling meant that the luggage was running late, and the flight was operating close to the airport’s flight curfew.

After “one hour and 16 minutes, the situation was still unchanged, and for operational reasons we decided to fly to Bilbao without the baggage,” said Ampalam.

“We are working hard to ensure that all passengers receive their luggage back as quickly as possible,” said the airline, which said that all bags would be reunited with passengers by Monday.

Among the 111 affected passengers was a team of paragliders who said their holiday had been ruined, after arriving in Bilbao without equipment.

This is not the first time this year passengers’ bags have had to be left behind. In July, during the summer heat wave two Scoot Airways flights flew from Athens, Greece, to Singapore departed without luggage. The carried blamed reduced takeoff weight on record temperatures, which could affect the performance of the aircraft.