Helsinki-Vantaa | The couple had to buy new flights because of the bag chaos – they don’t know where the luggage is now

Half around one o’clock on Thursday Joonatan Haataja was just about to board a Lufthansa flight to Spain with his girlfriend.

The couple was supposed to be on the Norwegian airline flight to Barcelona at 6:15, but they never made it. They had one checked bag.

“We practically queued with everyone present in one queue. Then when we managed to leave the bag in an absolutely absurd pile of bags and hurried through the security check to the gate, the flight had reportedly already left,” Haataja tells HS by phone.

A suitor he and his girlfriends had already been on the field well after four in the morning. Around the same time, however, the airport’s baggage system had a problem, which caused the airport to be badly congested.

The problem was fixed before noon.

The worst of the traffic jams seemed to be early in the morning. According to Haataja, it took more than 2.5 hours to get through the airport to the gate. There he finally had to buy new flights, this time from Lufthansa.

The couple will have to pay for the new flights themselves. Norwegian’s communications director Mira Linnamaa told HS that the passenger must contact the insurance company. The airline will not compensate for the new tickets, as the delay was not caused by it.

According to Haataja, some of the “same faces” as in the morning rush hour were visible at the gate of the new flight.

Although the new flight seems to have been able to leave normally, Haataja did not know where the couple’s checked luggage was and whether they would get on the Lufthansa plane. When buying a new flight, you could no longer claim the bag back and take it with you to the new check-in.

“We were told by Norwegian that the bag will not be flown to Barcelona because we are not going on that Norwegian flight. The airport staff said that they will try to fly, but it may be several days late.”

In general, according to him, the instructions at the airport were incomplete and confusing.

“There were very few staff there. They couldn’t say anything about the flights, whether they were leaving or waiting.”

Finnair announced in the morning that it would delay flights so that passengers could board. Norwegian’s communications director Linnamaa also said some flights were delayed.

According to him, about 40–45 passengers from the morning flights did not make it to their flights.

The Barcelona flight was also among the delayed flights, but not all passengers could get on board because of the congestion. More than a hundred bags were left with us from the trip to Linnama.

Erika Laine (left) and Nina Siljander organized their luggage at Helsinki-Vantaa on Thursday morning. Picture: Mika Ranta / HS

His father traveled with on Thursday morning Patrick Babic was luckier than Haataja. He reached his destination in Ljubljana, Slovenia, on time.

Babic says that he usually arrives at the airport too early. This time it paid off, because Babic also said that the process in Helsinki-Vantaa took about 2.5 hours.

However, the luggage did not make it onto the plane.

“We got there, but the bags didn’t come,” he says. They were promised to the two on Saturday, when Finnair’s next flight lands in Ljubljana.

Finnair’s communications manager Suvi Aaltonen review for HS on Thursdaythat luggage was left behind on most flights.

of HS met earlier at the airport the golf team was luckier than Haataja and Babiciak. Flew to Gdansk, Poland Nina Siljander said in the afternoon that the bags of the entire group had arrived on the same flight as their passengers.

“We took them straight to the special bag belt,” says Siljander. So the party didn’t leave them in the same place as the other bags.

“There was no one there and we were directed to take the goods directly to the belt.”