British Airways Trims Loading Luggage, Cleaning Planes on Short-Haul Flights

British Airways promises to get you to your destination on time.

Your luggage might be another story, at least temporarily.

The airline is suffering through the same issue plaguing virtually every other carrier in the world – a staffing shortage – and is making some dramatic adjustments on short-haul flights.

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According to the travel blog Paddle Your Own Kanoo, British Airways this week began scaling back loading luggage on flights and cleaning planes in between trips to help keep up with the huge travel demand during spring break and the Easter holiday.

Instead, BA is making long-haul flights its priority in the short term. The airline has told its baggage handlers to stop loading luggage for short-haul flights – but it is telling passengers that their bags will be sent separately in “the coming days.”

Because of the short staffing, bags often remain in the plane for hours on end upon arrival and have caused a domino effect of delays and cancellations of subsequent flights.

But as the website pointed out, some passengers have not received their bags in “the coming days” after arriving and have waited a week or more.

British Airways CEO Sean Doyle, in a memo to staff, said all parties should be “rightly fed up” about the staffing situation, and he vowed to address the situation. Like many other airlines, BA has cut flights from its schedule through the end of May.