Flight chaos in Munich: Lufthansa plane flies without suitcases and hand luggage – “just curious”
Created: 06/29/2022, 07:31
By: Julian Limmer
A jet was traveling from Munich Airport without a suitcase.
© Peter Kneffel/dpa
A Lufthansa plane from Munich flew to Budapest without a suitcase.
Passengers even had to check in their hand luggage beforehand.
Munich – Stefan Kastel (56) has flown many times, but he has never experienced such chaos.
When the Munich lawyer wanted to travel to Budapest on a Lufthansa plane last Friday, boarding was delayed by around an hour.
And when the plane finally landed with a delay in Hungary, Kastel and his fellow travelers were in for a nasty surprise: they waited at the baggage carousel for more than an hour – in vain.
Not a single suitcase came!
The luggage compartment of the plane was empty, everything had been left behind in Munich.
Flight chaos in Munich: Lufthansa plane flies without suitcases and hand luggage
"At first I was impatient, then it annoyed me, at some point I just found it strange," says Kastel.
The mood among the passengers was tense, and some shouted loudly around the area.
Because: In addition, the airline had asked the passengers before departure to also check in their hand luggage at the counter.
The reason: the flight was fully booked and there was not enough storage space in the cabin.
According to Kastel, this meant that many people in Budapest were completely without a piece of luggage.
No suitcase, no bag, no backpack, nothing.
How can something like that happen?
Munich Airport: Loading company overwhelmed by "massive shifts".
There was chaos at Munich Airport on Friday anyway: there were cancellations, long queues and sometimes considerable delays (tz reported).
This also affected Stefan Kastel's flight: Upon request, Munich Airport reported that the employees of the loading company were therefore unable to load the suitcases in the "desired time".
Reason: The staff was still tied up by handling other planes due to "massive shifts" - so the suitcases stayed where they were!
A Lufthansa spokeswoman also points out the current industry problems, from which the loading and unloading of the machines is not spared.
Especially at peak times around midday, "everyone involved could reach the limits of the available resources".
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The lack of staff is noticeable everywhere - even at the airport itself. The loading companies could basically handle the handling, according to a spokesman, but the capacities are not sufficient "to be able to cushion irregularities in the overall system".
Stefan Kastel got to feel what that means.
By the way, he still hasn't got his small trolley case, in which his clothes and laptop accessories were, back.
In Budapest he first went shopping.
