Luggage stacked in front of the entrance to Orly terminal 4, after a technical incident at Paris-Orly airport, August 3, 2023 Luggage stacked in front of the entrance to Orly terminal 4, after a technical incident at Paris-Orly airport, August 3, 2023 Luggage piled up in front of the entrance to Orly terminal 4, after a technical incident at Paris-Orly airport, August 3, 2023 (AFP/STEFANO RELLANDINI)
Delayed flights, some forced to take off without checked baggage: an “unprecedented breakdown” of more than 12 hours disrupted Paris-Orly airport on Thursday, in the middle of the summer peak period.
This “unprecedented” computer failure, which affected some 10,000 passengers and 40 flights, was observed before dawn on Thursday, when the baggage handling facilities in Terminal 4 of the second French airport started up.
After mobilizing the technical teams throughout the day, “luggage sorting was able to restart at 6.50 p.m.”, Groupe ADP, manager of the platform, told AFP.
“Passengers will be able to check in their baggage normally for the flights scheduled for this evening”, according to ADP, which specified that “all flights were able to leave today” and that “no flight has been canceled”.
According to an airport source, during the breakdown, the luggage was “processed by hand for the vast majority”. Consequence: “a lot of luggage (has been) stored, with passengers leaving but not the luggage”.
In fact, in front of the entrance to Orly 4 during the afternoon, several hundred pieces of luggage were piled up on trolleys, behind security tapes. A little further, ADP employees, in orange vests, loaded them into buses, noted an AFP journalist.
The manager promised Thursday evening that “all arrangements have been made so that luggage that could not be delivered today will be delivered on the next rotation”.
Terminal 4 welcomes companies serving overseas or foreign countries, in particular the Maghreb. The other terminals of the platform south of Paris were not affected by the outage.
Air Caraïbes and French Bee planes had to take off on Thursday without checked baggage, confirmed to AFP Marc Rochet, the leader of these companies, referring to a “critical situation”.
This breakdown, which occurs “during peak periods” in the summer, “creates a lot of disorder”, he lamented, evaluating at “between one and three hours” the take-off delays for his planes.
At the start of the evening, the Orly departure board seemed to show an almost normal situation, with the exception of a Tunisair flight to Tunis scheduled almost two hours late.
– “Not acceptable” for the minister –
“I’m going on vacation, I don’t know if I’ll have my luggage on arrival,” lamented Sonia Lawani, 40, who is traveling to Cotonou, Benin.
A fear shared by other passengers, such as Karine Tourneur, a 55-year-old financial consultant, who waited more than an hour to check in her luggage before leaving her suitcase outside, without knowing if it would take the same flight as her for Reunion, where she goes on vacation. So she slipped a few things, including her swimsuit, into her cabin baggage, just in case.
“The staff seem to me very well organized to try to send all the luggage by bus, the organization seems reassuring to me,” she said while waiting for her flight, which was already three hours late.
According to ADP, which has apologized, “palliative solutions have been put in place in collaboration with the companies”, in particular the transfer to the other Orly terminals, or even to Paris-Charles-de-Gaulle, north of the capital city.
“What is happening at Orly is not acceptable, we cannot have hours of problems sorting luggage”, reacted the Minister Delegate for Transport Clément Beaune.
Mr. Beaune had presented in mid-July a series of commitments to improve the quality of service in French airports, in particular in view of the 2024 Olympic Games.
“It is exactly this kind of very concrete point that we must monitor”, affirmed Mr. Beaune: “a link in the chain which jumps, you have a very great difficulty”.
This incident broke out when the summer in Paris airports had started better than in 2022, with operations generally fluid despite traffic levels close to 2019, before the health crisis.
According to the airport source, the baggage handling systems at Orly 3 have nevertheless recently experienced disruptions, on July 21 and August 1.
A year ago, 35,000 pieces of luggage were “lost” after a three-hour strike by ADP employees in Charles-de-Gaulle.
© 2023 AFP
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