Munich (dpa / lby) – At Munich Airport there are still several thousand suitcases from passengers whose flights were canceled or diverted two weeks ago due to freezing rain and snow. The normal baggage handling runs smoothly, said an airport spokesman on Thursday. But the forwarding of luggage left behind at the time was time-consuming.
On the icy days in mid-December, the airlines canceled 720 flights to and from Munich. Since then, the luggage has been flown to the destination by the airlines, sometimes via intermediate stations, or delivered to the passengers by courier, said the airport spokesman. The employees of the airlines and baggage handling worked intensively on it. The bottleneck is now that the flight schedule is thinner between the years and the planes usually have little space for additional luggage. “That’s why it takes a while until all suitcases are where they should be.”
Baggage is handled in Munich by the airport’s own Aeroground and the private service provider Swissport Losch. Both are looking for staff. Airport works council member Ralf Krüger told the “Augsburger Allgemeine” newspaper: “More people are retiring every week than new ones are hired.” Baggage handlers from Turkey also helped out at Munich Airport for a few weeks last summer. German airports are expecting the number of passengers to increase to 205 million in the new year, which would be 82 percent of the volume in the year before the crisis, 2019.
