A technical fault in Heathrow Airport's baggage system on Thursday 3 September left around 3,000 items stranded at Terminal 5, meaning hundreds of British Airways passengers arrived at their destinations without their luggage.
The problem stopped bags being loaded onto departing aircraft at Terminal 5, which is British Airways' main hub and the busiest terminal in the UK. An airport source put the number of stranded items at approximately 3,000, according to City AM.
A Heathrow spokesperson said: "We apologise to any passengers who have experienced delays in their baggage departing Terminal 5. The fault has now been resolved, and we are operating as normal. We will continue to work closely with airlines to reunite passengers with their bags as quickly as possible."
Heathrow confirmed the fault sat with its own baggage infrastructure rather than with British Airways. A British Airways spokesman said: "While this issue was outside our control, we apologise to our customers for the inconvenience caused."
Only passengers departing from Terminal 5 were affected. Airport and airline teams have been working to forward the stranded luggage on to travellers at their destinations around the world.
It is the latest in a run of baggage system problems at Heathrow this year. A larger failure in May left around 20,000 bags stranded after a Friday night outage, which the airline said was the fifth such failure at Heathrow since the start of 2026, following earlier incidents affecting 7,000 bags in February and 4,000 around Easter.