A power outage affected operations at Cape Town
International Airport (CPT) yesterday afternoon (September 30), temporarily
bringing the domestic luggage system to a halt.
An agent, who wished to remain anonymous, told eTNW that passengers travelling
domestically were unable to hand in luggage at the check-in counter.“They were told to take their luggage downstairs
to the section where oversized luggage is handed in for international flights.
The queue was incredibly long and there were no staff to assist older passengers
with lifting their luggage so that it could be handed to the man signing it
in.”
The agent added that passengers on one of the CPT-HLA
flights did not receive their luggage on arrival in Johannesburg. “They were
told an announcement would be made regarding when they would receive their
luggage – no such announcement was made. They were then asked to fill out forms
to ensure their luggage was returned to them and there were not enough forms to
go around.”
At 14h30 on Monday (October 1), passengers still hadn’t been
updated on when their luggage would be returned to them, or why it hadn’t
arrived at HLA when it was supposed to, according to the agent. The agent
declined to reveal the airline in question.
An Acsa spokesperson for CPT told eTNW that the power outage had affected the airport’s luggage
system, which wasn’t one of the systems that could be powered by the generator,
adding that the systems were operational once again.
When asked why passengers hadn’t received their luggage, the
spokesperson said each airline had a different protocol for dealing with
luggage and would need to be contacted directly to resolve any queries.
