Short-staffed Australian airports in chaos as flights depart without any luggage

Baggage handlers have been so short-staffed that entire flights have departed without luggage as the Easter travel crush peaked at Australian airports, with unions warning the pandemic-depleted aviation industry is now structurally incapable of coping with pre-Covid-like levels of travel demand. While unloaded baggage and long queues affected travellers across the country on Thursday, unions have claimed that in Brisbane, so few service workers were available that female cleaners were sent in to clean male toilets while travellers were using them, and male cleaners into bathrooms with female patrons. The pressures of the holiday period, Covid isolation orders, and a workforce cut and outsourced during the pandemic has led to chaotic scenes at airports across the country, just as they record hundreds of thousands of travellers in what will be their busiest periods since before the pandemic. In Melbourne, Guardian Australia can reveal that baggage handlers working on Qantas flights but employed by international company Swissport – part of a controversial and legally contentious outsourcing decision – have been so short-staffed that some planes have been forced to leave without passengers’ luggage loaded on to the flight. At other instances in recent days, flights have left with half of the checked-in luggage, which allows the flights to depart with less delay. Irate passengers who appeared to be on flights affected by shortages of baggage handlers have been told they will receive their luggage in coming days. An airport source said that on one occasion in recent days, just 87 of the 150 bags checked on a flight were loaded on to the plane.<br/>