Not much can be done against a pandemic and the resulting shortage of staff. What drives the people who are currently looking in vain for their luggage at BER to despair is incompetence or a lack of enthusiasm when it comes to organization – an oath of disclosure that reveals that the once famous efficiency is no longer far off.
There is the doctor who returns from Athens with her family at 10:50 p.m. They changed in Munich. The suitcases are not on the plane. Amidst angry people who felt the same way, she witnessed how the staff at the Aeroground, which is responsible for handling baggage, closed the counter just before midnight. Quitting time! After all, there is the assurance from Lufthansa that the suitcases will be brought in the early morning plane.
On Wednesday, the woman has to queue for three hours at the airport. Is first asked to inspect over 1000 lost suitcases in a hall to see if their luggage is there, then after standing in line again informed that theirs can’t possibly be there. After all, she is sent to baggage carousel 1, on which a similarly missing travel bag rolls up. The two suitcases remain gone. Phone numbers given to her don’t work, and the email she’s supposed to write goes unanswered, of course.
The game is repeated the following day. Stand in line again. Inspect 1000 suitcases again. Then the message, yes, the suitcases were at BER, but they were beyond the flight security limit. Nobody can and should go there. Nor does anyone know when they could be taken from there.
On the third day, the doctor will witness how frustrated employees brutally throw the suitcases around and kick them. How rough the sound has become at the airport can already be guessed in conversations with fellow sufferers. Again she is supposed to inspect the 1000 suitcases, this time including those from overseas as a precaution.
And then all of a sudden she’s lucky, comes across a willing and apparently competent employee who is able to have the suitcases searched for in a targeted manner. After 40 minutes they are found, after another ten minutes they roll over the baggage carousel. The fact that the newly bought pan in Greece, which was in one of the suitcases, is totally dented, makes the family laugh. It becomes a symbol for states in which sheer luck replaces reliability.
With more thoughtful organization and a bit of a love of success, conditions could possibly be created even with less trained employees, in which a doctor would not have to shorten her office hours three times in a row just because she had to reach for suitcases that she had unsuspectingly given up.
