Aus: Passengers delayed, 2,000 bags miss their flights

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Tuesday, July 4, 2000 Home

Passengers delayed, 2,000 bags miss their flights By ROBERT WAINWRIGHT, Transport Writer

About 6,500 international passengers were delayed and 2,000 pieces of luggage left behind in the latest collapse of the controversial $43 million baggage system at Sydney Airport.

The Herald has obtained a computerised list of flights showing that 21 Qantas and another 40 international flights were delayed for up to five hours on Saturday, fuelling worries that the system might not be able to cope with the demands of the Olympics.

The breakdown, which will cost airlines at least $200 for each delayed bag, follows another last Thursday when 300 bags missed their flights.

It also comes in the wake of an industrial dispute in May when 400 baggage handlers banned the system because of safety worries. Bags were being thrown off the belts, narrowly missing the workers.

At the time, Sydney Airport Corporation Ltd officials played down the problems and promised they would be fixed by June. But last night SACL confirmed the latest breakdown. "It was a computer software problem, quite different to the earlier safety problems," SACL said. "It was caused by the fact that it is a complex system to integrate the old with the new." There were no worker safety issues involved in this incident, it said.

But critics say the problems are far worse, pointing to the huge discrepancy with international standards which state that not more than three bags a day should go missing. Saturday's problems, which began early in the morning, amounted to almost two years' worth of acceptable losses.

The executive director of the Board of Airline Representatives of Australia, Mr Warren Bennett, said relations between airlines and SACL were tense.

"If this sort of breakdown occurs during the Olympics then it will be chaos," he said.

"We thought the system had settled down in the past month because there has been no reports of major glitches. I would not be surprised if our members [airlines] were pushing for some sort of compensation."

A Qantas spokeswoman said the company was talking to SACL about the cost of the delays, which she described as extensive. "We have 6,500 passengers impacted in some way and about 2,000 bags delayed," she said. "The airline is discussing the unavailability of the system with SACL."

A spokesman for the Transport Workers Union, Mr Richard Olsen, described the system as "totally unsatisfactory". "There would be a breakdown every week at the moment, and they all seem to happen in peak times such as the weekends," he said.

Last night, SACL said a "detailed baggage upgrade program" was due to be completed later this month.

"We are aggressively pursuing the resolution of the last remaining integration issues," a spokesman said.

"Additional on-site resources have been committed to ensure that any future problems are quickly fixed prior to the final commissioning of the integrated baggage system."

http://www.smh.com.au/news/0007/04/pageone/pageone05.html

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), July 03, 2000

Answers

Wednesday, July 5, 2000

Airlines bag airport for luggage carry-on By ROBERT WAINWRIGHT, Transport Writer

Major airlines have launched a tirade of criticism against Sydney Airport officials in the wake of the collapse of its controversial baggage system.

As airport officials promised to have it fixed by the end of the month, airlines criticised the decision to entrust the purchase of critical computer software for the $43 million system to a construction consortium, Bovis Lend Lease.

The system stopped again yesterday when the computer linking the old and new systems was rebooted. It followed an 11-hour breakdown on Saturday which delayed about 50 outgoing international flights, 6,500 passengers and 2,000 pieces of luggage.

Reports emerged yesterday of incoming passengers also being affected by Saturday's breakdown. Some passengers were allegedly kept aboard aircraft on the tarmac for up to two hours after arriving on 12- to 14-hour flights.

To add to the airport's woes, its car park was also gridlocked, with some complaining they were trapped inside the boom gates for an hour. Airport staff were forced to open the gates to clear the backlog.

"The passengers would have been tired and eager to get out of the aircraft but were kept waiting for hours," the executive director of the Board of Airline Representatives of Australia, Mr Warren Bennett, said.

"When they were allowed off the aircraft it caused such a rush that customs couldn't handle the numbers."

One motorist who picked up relatives at the airport on Saturday described the car park as chaotic: "There were a lot of angry people because every aisle was gridlocked."

Mr Bennett said airlines, including Qantas, were losing confidence in the ability of Sydney Airport Corporation Ltd to fix the baggage problems.

"As we understand, SACL left it up to the builder, Bovis Lend Lease, to oversee the introduction of the software. They contracted the work out to a Dutch firm," Mr Bennett said.

"It seemed curious to us, and the cause of some concern, that SACL wasn't overseeing the work themselves.

"We certainly asked them to test it thoroughly themselves before its introduction. They claim they did so, both on and off-site, but it has constantly fallen over."

SACL officials yesterday guaranteed the system would be fixed by the end of the month.

"The key point we want to stress is that the system will be fixed by the end of July - full stop," a SACL spokesman said.

The spokesman confirmed there were major problems in the airport car park, caused by a combination of recently finished work, a rush of 17 arriving aircraft in an hour and the introduction of the GST.

He defended the use of Bovis Lend Lease, commenting: "We are not builders, and they are the prime contractors."

A spokeswoman for Bovis Lend Lease confirmed it was involved in a team trying to fix the software problems that is also developing a "parallel" back-up system to avoid problems such as last Saturday's debacle.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/0007/05/national/national05.html

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), July 04, 2000.


Sounds like a replay of the Denver airport probem of about five years ago.

-- Loner (loner@bigfoot.com), July 04, 2000.

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