Hundreds of passengers who have flown out of Birmingham Airport have been left without luggage due to issues with its baggage systems.

One described the situation as “absolute chaos” after the airport said it was experiencing issues affecting outbound flights.

In an update at 05:40 BST on Saturday, the airport warned passengers the problems were ongoing, but that engineers were on site working as quickly as possible to resolve it.

Hayley Chapman, from Northfield, who flew with her family to Turkey on Friday said no luggage at all was loaded on to the plane, and they had received no information as to its whereabouts.

She described seeing a “build up” of luggage at the airport, after problems with the luggage belt, but had been assured by staff that it would be loaded on to the plane.

But on arrival at Dalaman they were told by the pilot that no bags had been loaded.

“We have heard nothing about compensation, no communication when our luggage is expected, we’ve heard nothing about who is liable for it. Is it the airport? Is it TUI? Is it our travel insurance? Who are we meant to go to? We’ve had nothing from anybody”, Chapman said.

“It’s just radio silence from the airport, apart from literally telling people ‘we’ve got an issue'”.

The first day of their holiday was spent travelling to a shopping centre to buy essentials for “for the next few days” but she added “we have no idea how long this is going to last”.

“There are families all over the world at the moment with nothing and no idea of what’s going on,” she said.

“It’s really important that Birmingham Airport are held accountable, and sort this out.”

Eve Sandle, who was also on the flight with her mum, received a text from airline TUI saying “some of your bags on TOM810 may not have arrived today,” and advising passengers of next steps.

“The text couldn’t be further from the truth,” she said, “they knew no cases were on that plane.”

“Not a TUI rep to be seen to support in the airport, and hotel reps haven’t even been made aware of the issues,” she added.

“We are in a foreign county with only the clothes we are standing in.”

“I have brought my mum here for a week and it’s not quite gone to plan,” she added.

Simon Leyland’s bags also didn’t make it with him to Rome after he travelled on a Jet2 flight from Birmingham on Friday to join a cruise with his family.

“We were sat there yesterday with no bags, no record of any bags and the cruise line saying ‘our coach is going to set off, and if you don’t get on it you won’t get on the ship’.

“There are 30 other people on our cruise in a similar position,” Leyland, from Barton-under-Needwood, added.

While in Messina, on Sicily, he managed to track his luggage to Rome using AirTags. One of the bags had spent the night at Liverpool’s John Lennon Airport, while another had visited Manchester.

He is now hopeful the family will be reunited with the luggage in Corfu next week, but said communication about the problem had been “awful”.

“Things can go wrong, no reasonable person thinks it should always be perfect, but there should be a point where it’s like, ‘we understand, it’s an issue and we’ll just over-communicate and we’ll tell you where they are’.”

Clive Stokes, from Kidderminster, who travelled to Cyprus, said delays at the airport were “understandable” given the problems.

“But what the airport didn’t do is explain the situation to people.”

He said he had received an email on Friday evening, “two hours into our flight, saying there was a good chance our baggage wouldn’t be there”.

On arrival, only “about 20 cases” had came through, he added.

“I’ve probably spent between three and four hundred euros today on my credit card just to buy stuff, which, I think, I hope they’ll reimburse,” he added.

“It’s not the end of the earth, but there were people on the flight who were getting married, so they’ve got wedding dresses missing.”

Birmingham Airport said holiday company Jet2 had contacted all affected passengers, and other third parties were also working to reunite passengers with repatriated bags.

An airport spokesperson said: “We are continuing to experience an issue with our baggage systems which is impacting some outbound luggage.

“Engineers are on site and working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible. Terminal colleagues are also working hard to ensure baggage in terminal is being processed as quickly as possible.

“We expect this to cause inconvenience for some passengers, and we sincerely apologise for this. Those due to travel today, should still arrive at the airport in line with Airline advice.”

TUI has been approached for comment.

Some flights from Bristol Airport are being diverted through Birmingham after flights were suspended due to a runway defect.

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