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Delta Air Lines filled an entire Airbus A330-200 with around 1,000 pieces of luggage belonging to passengers whose bags were stuck at London's Heathrow Airport and flew the bags to the United States.
Heathrow has been struggling with staffing problems, causing lengthy delays and numerous cancellations. Many passengers traveling through the airport have reported their luggage never made it on the plane with them. The airport has been struggling to deal with the growing number of bags that continue to pile up. To help alleviate the problems, officials were forced to institute a daily cap of 100,000 passengers.
As a result of the cap, a Delta Air Lines flight to Detroit had to be canceled. Delta wanted to make the best of a bad situation and decided to fill the plane with the displaced luggage and fly it, without passengers, to Detroit. All of the bags were loaded into the belly of the aircraft, and none of them were stored in the passenger cabin.
Once the flight arrived in Detroit, Delta began shipping the luggage to customers across the country.
Delta said that all of the passengers on the canceled flight were rebooked.
"Delta teams worked a creative solution to move delayed checked bags from London-Heathrow on July 11 after a regularly scheduled flight had to be canceled given airport passenger volume restrictions at Heathrow," a Delta spokesperson told Business Insider.