Due to the malfunction in part of the baggage system at Schiphol, 12,000 to 15,000 suitcases are now waiting to be sent back to their owners. The outage started yesterday and was repaired after a few hours. The consequences turned out to be major: in addition to the new baggage storage area that could be added to all the existing suitcase chaos, KLM travelers who transferred at Schiphol today were forced to leave their hold baggage behind.
KLM took the measure to prevent the suitcase chaos in the baggage basements from becoming too great to oversee. Travelers who transferred from a European airport via Schiphol to a KLM flight to another European destination were not allowed to check in their hold baggage.
Wilma Sassen, team manager baggage at Schiphol, is in the dark as to why KLM went this far: “We have full capacity, so we are running normally again and can process everything again.” Sassen does warn travelers that due to the malfunction, they sometimes have to wait days for their luggage to be sent back.
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Under the baggage belts at Schiphol, 15,000 suitcases are still waiting for dispatch – NH Nieuws / Niels van Steijn
The cause of the malfunction is not yet known. It may have been caused by a suitcase that fell out of a luggage cart during transport. “We are in a system here that has induction-driven trolleys,” says Eric Leguijt, the architect of the baggage system at Schiphol. “Those carts get a push from a magnet. The moment a suitcase falls out, that is also disrupted. Then you get an enormous stagnation in the process.”
office workers
Schiphol has deployed office staff to help feed the leftover suitcases into the computer systems, sort them and send them to the owners as quickly as possible.