Dhe name evokes southern associations. In fact, the “Tango Terminal” at Hamburg Airport is a sad, low-rise building. Most travelers don’t even notice the somewhat dilapidated building between the check-in halls and multi-storey car parks.
At other times, not-too-glamorous wedding fairs are held here. But in recent weeks, Terminal Tango has become a place of great emotions. Of bewilderment, anger and resignation.
Because Terminal Tango is the place where countless North Germans are looking for their suitcases these days. Hundreds of suitcases, travel bags, prams and surfboards are stacked in two halls. Between the mountains, helpless travelers search for their lost belongings.
Sometimes someone finds a suitcase, then a bunch of new strays come in, spat out weeks late by some plane. It’s been like this all summer. “In the peak phase we had 2000 pieces of luggage here,” says a spokeswoman for the airport, who only seems annoyed by the situation. How many is it currently, maybe 1000 or 1500? “We do not know it!”
The summer holidays are coming to an end. In the first federal states, everyday school life is already running again. But many a child will be forced to end up in the spare set in the classroom because their favorite shirts are still missing. Crumpled up in a suitcase for which the holiday trip is far from over. After the flood of passengers, the airports are now sinking into a chaos of suitcases.
Because there are halls like the Terminal Tango at many German airports. “We currently receive around 300 suitcases traveling alone every day,” says a spokeswoman for the capital’s airport BER. A guarded area has been set up near the baggage check. There, Berliners now rummage through mountains of luggage for their lost possessions.
“It’s going to be a little tricky with an unbranded black suitcase,” the spokeswoman said. “We have a lot of suitcases,” it says at Hanover Airport, too. “Luggage pieces that didn’t make it somewhere where passengers changed planes are stacked up here, too.”
The suitcase is in Portugal
“Rush luggage” is the name of the suitcase category in industry jargon that is now causing the big problems. While passengers on direct flights can be relatively confident of seeing their checked bags at their destination, baggage handling on long-distance flights becomes a gamble.
Especially at the most important German hub in Frankfurt, the ground services seem overwhelmed with reloading the luggage. And once the passenger and luggage have been separated, it can be the beginning of a long journey with Kafkaesque twists for both of them.
In Terminal Tango, a young man in a black t-shirt sticks his head through the door. “I’m still missing a suitcase,” he says, unsurprisingly. “He seems to be in Portugal,” he adds, holding up his smartphone as if to prove it.
Like many others, he has provided his luggage with a tracker that now tells him the approximate position. The big bag of camping gear that he would have liked to have had at the festival in Portugal has been found in Terminal Tango.
The bag with his girlfriend’s clothes, which was posted under the same number, appears to have disappeared in Portugal. An employee of a private security service listens to the story of the 34-year-old Lufthansa passenger with a straight face. “Portugal?” she finally interrupts. “You’ll have to contact TAP. There’s nothing we can do about that.”
Hamburg was one of the first airports where the suitcase misery became visible. As early as June mountains of bags were piled up next to the issue belts in the arrivals area without anyone seeming to be taking care of them. In their helplessness, individual travelers even booked random plane tickets just to get into the security area and be able to look for their suitcase.
In the meantime, the abandoned luggage is being removed from the protected area. But while they’re usually tagged and could be delivered to their owners, not much seems to be happening. Hamburg Airport sees itself wrongly pilloried for this.
One should not read the labels for data protection reasons, the spokeswoman said. The airlines are obliged to send lost luggage to their customers. “That’s practically all Lufthansa!“
In fact, Germany’s largest airline does not deny the problems. “The staff shortages at the airport in Frankfurt have caused a particularly high backlog of luggage,” admits a spokeswoman. In the last few weeks, “the luggage was so late that some of the guests were already on their return flight or on their way to another destination when it was delivered”.
Crying pensioners between mountains of suitcases
It is not possible to say how many suitcases belonging to Lufthansa passengers have disappeared. At the hubs in Munich and Frankfurt, the high backlog could be worked up. Now Lufthansa will also “gradually dismantle the mountain of suitcases” at the decentralized stations, according to the spokeswoman. “Many thousands of pieces of luggage have already been delivered.”
The service provider AHS, used by Lufthansa at many airports, is similarly vague. Disruptions in air traffic have meant that “more pieces of luggage than ever before could not be handed over to their owners at the end of the flight,” it said on request.
Nationwide, 500 to 600 people were hired, who would primarily be used to process the luggage, “so that they can be delivered to their owners as quickly as possible.”
If a suitcase is still not at its destination 21 days after its scheduled arrival, it is considered lost under the Montreal Convention. Travelers are then entitled to compensation of up to 1,288 “special drawing rights” at currently 1.28 euros per person, i.e. a maximum of almost 1,700 euros.
In addition to the reimbursement hassle due to canceled flights, the airlines are now facing a wave of claims for lost suitcases and replacement purchases.
Here, too, the experiences of customers are sometimes grotesque. The Schleswig-Holstein entrepreneur Martin Nitsche has been struggling in vain with various hotlines and jobs at Lufthansa for several weeks after his son returned from a five-month stay abroad in Canada, but all his belongings, which were divided into two suitcases, spilled on the last leg from Frankfurt to Hamburg had gone.
Although a longtime Senator status holder has access to the better established service hotlines, the operating Lufthansa appears unable to record the case or issue a refund because the ticket was issued by Air Canada.
Nitsche finally found the suitcases on his own with the help of attached tracking chips – in the “Tango Terminal”. He feels sorry for the chaos, especially for the old people. “I’ve seen retired couples cry between suitcases.”
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