LOOTING and theft from luggage has increased at airports in the chaos after the terrorist alert. Passengers have also been left without keys to their homes and cars, and other valuable possessions.

Tens of thousands of bags have become stranded at London’s main airports, with airlines having to hire delivery companies and use cargo aircraft to reunite passengers with their luggage.

A huge backlog of missing items has been flown around the world during the disruption to flights after they were left at Heathrow and Gatwick.

At least 5,000 items remained undelivered at Heathrow yesterday after the baggage handling system there was overwhelmed. At least 3,500 bags are also being held in warehouses at Gatwick, handling agents said.

Passengers who travelled under last weekend’s strict security restrictions have been left without keys to their homes and cars as well as mobile phones and laptops that had to be checked in on flights.

The increased value of items in left luggage has also led to a rise in looting and theft at airports, which remains a grey area for insurance companies.

Even with the recent relaxation in rules to allow one small piece of hand baggage on flights, passengers were checking in four times as many bags as before, handlers said, with many flights departing without a full complement of luggage.

One handler at Gatwick, who did not wish to be named, described “utter chaos” at the airport. “All these bags have become frozen in the system, with no quick fix to get them back to their owners. If you have lost a bag, you have to report it and give a forwarding address, but with the recent delays that has become complicated. Passengers who flew out on Thursday and Friday are coming back to Britain now, knowing their baggage was left here, and all we can tell them is that it has already followed them on to where they were, or is being kept in a secure warehouse.

“People have effectively become locked out of their own homes and cars, or had their belongings stolen because everyone now knows that luggage from London is likely to have expensive items in it. Everybody is blaming everybody else, but the main problem is a lack of staff to deal with the mopping up.”

British Airways has drafted in volunteers and extra staff to work around the clock to clear its own backlog at Heathrow. A spokeswoman for BA also said that it had also hired FedEx, the courier company, to fly bags to their owners to addresses in the United States and other long-haul destinations.

A BA spokeswoman said: “We fully apologise that customers have not been able to travel with their baggage on certain flights throughout the past five days of unprecedented circumstances at Heathrow.”

A spokeswoman from the British Airports Authority said that luggage belts had been stopping because of too many unusual and outsized bags in the system, but added that baggage handling was the responsibility of individual airlines.

About 10,000 passenger bags have gone missing since the security alert began, BA said, with half of them still piled up at airports.

Analysts have speculated that lost revenues from flight cancellations could cost the airline more than £40 million.

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