Glitch Creates Baggage Chaos at Bangkok Airport

Anyone flying out of Bangkok's new Suvarnabhumi airport might want to consider squeezing all their belongings into their hand luggage after 6,700 pieces of check-in baggage were stranded on Saturday following the failure of a computerised sorting system.

Of these, 1,200 missed their flights and had to be forwarded later. More than 20 domestic and international flights were delayed, most notably on Thai Airways, Cathay Pacific, Vietnam Airlines and China Airlines.

Somchai Sawasdeepon, vice president of the Thai airport authority, Airports of Thailand, was quoted by the Bangkok Post newspaper yesterday as saying the problem occurred when the luggage sorting system twice failed to read barcodes on tags, for a total of 80 minutes.

Staff were ordered to switch to a manual contingency plan involving the total number of checked-in bags being recounted but many employees were reportedly confused about what this entailed and so mountains of luggage quickly built up at departure terminals.

Dozens of soldiers were hurriedly deployed to move the baggage.

The bad news for passengers is that airport officials admitted they have no idea what caused the glitch and so have little idea how to solve it. "This [problem] is something about the database of the server used for baggage sorting," Mr Somchai was quoted as saying.

The installer of the baggage handling system, the Japanese firm Kawasaki Co, has been summoned for meetings to resolve the problem. Delays are expected at least until midday today.

Suvarnabhumi has been beset by baggage handling problems since it opened on September 28. The chaos on the first day was deemed so bad it resulted in the Thai Airways managing director for ground support equipment services, Pethai Boonyaves, being moved to an inactive position.

The Post said the hiccups have cost the airline hundreds of thousands of pounds in compensation.