The case of the missing case…

Had a lovely three weeks in the Czech Republic. Flew back from Prague to Edinburgh airport on Monday evening. Good old Ryanair, the cattle truck of the sky. We went to retrieve our cases from the baggage carousel, and waited….then waited some more. By now the place was filling up with sweaty bodies, all wanting the same thing, grab suitcases then go home. After a hour the tannoy came to life and a lady said in a very matter of fact tone that all our cases would not be available to collect due to staffing problems. “Please come back tomorrow,” she said, then did a runner, just like that, as Tommy Copper would say. We were lucky. Our daughter lives in Galashiels, fourty minutes drive away. Others had to find hotels or wherever they could get, God knows where.

So we turn up at the Swissport area the next day. They are the company that handle the baggage. I expected to walk into a building with my case numbers and away we go, job done. But no, some bright spark who probably gets paid a lot of money had the great idea to put hundreds of cases from different flights all over the outside of a warehouse….on the hottest day of the year….with no shade. Complete bedlem. The staff (who to be fair were brilliant in a very tricky situation) ran around like headless chickens. Good natured Police officers were calming customers down as best they could but let’s face it, that was never going to work. After searching all over our cases had disappeared, along with hundreds of others. Apparently they are somewhere…maybe still airside… possibly piled high in a warehouse. They might have rolled away and gone on a holiday for all I know. Phone calls and e-mails to the airport and Swissport are unanswered so far. By the sound of it, it’s been going on for weeks and some people still haven’t got their luggage from a couple of months ago. All my dirty gear will be smelling the place out so I’m hoping after awhile the stench will make them sling the case back to me, if not, the whole airport will need to be closed and fumigated….