ATLANTA — London's Heathrow Airport is quick becoming the international symbol for the struggles of the air industry under tremendous demand from travelers, many of whom are taking their first plane trips since the onset of the pandemic.
The airport in the UK capital has already imposed a passenger limit of 100,000 travelers per day and asked airlines to stop booking flights in and out of Heathrow for the rest of the summer, citing a severe staffing shortage.
Those issues led to a remarkable decision Delta undertook this week, reported by NBC News.
According to the report, Delta packed up an Airbus A330-200 full of nothing but luggage and flew it all the way back to America.
Images have streamed out of Heathrow of rows and rows of stranded bags, as the staffing shortages have led to lost and delayed bags by the thousands. According to The New York Times, which first reported the story, many of those bags belonged to Delta customers who became separated from their bags going through London because of all the operational disruptions
So when a flight from London to Detroit was canceled due to Heathrow's strain under heavy passenger loads, Delta - sitting there with a plane bound for Detroit and no passengers to actually bring to Detroit - came up with what they called a "creative solution" to "accelerate movement of delayed bags."
They flew the canceled flight, just full of bags. Roughly 1,000 in all.
Once the bags got to Detroit, Delta said they were able to start forwarding them back to customers.
A flight full of bags - one way to make lemonade out of air travel lemons, evidently.